[72] I met with an old man, who informed me, that if from any accident he retained his urine after he felt an inclination to discharge it, he was affected by a numbness, accompanied by an uneasy sensation in the palms of his hands. 7. _Wakefulness._ This is probably produced in part by the action of the urine upon the bladder; but such is the excitability of the system in the first stages of old age, that there is no pain so light, no anxiety so trifling, and no sound so small, as not to produce wakefulness in old people. It is owing to their imperfect sleep, that they are sometimes as unconscious of the moment of their passing from a sleeping to a waking state, as young and middle-aged people are of the moment in which they pass from the waking to a sleeping state. Hence we so often hear them complain of passing sleepless nights. This is no doubt frequently the case, but I am satisfied, from the result of an inquiry made upon this subject, that they often sleep without knowing it, and that their complaints in the morning, of the want of sleep, arise from ignorance, without the least intention to deceive. 8. _Giddiness._ 9. _Deafness._ 10. _Imperfect vision._ The acute diseases most common among old people, are, 1. _Inflammation of the eyes._ 2. The _pneumonia notha_, or bastard peripneumony. 3. The _colic_. 4. _Palsy_ and _apoplexy_. 5. The _piles_. 6. A _difficulty in making water_. 7. _Quartan fever._ All the diseases of old people, both chronic and acute, originate in predisposing debility. The remedies for the former, where a feeble morbid action takes place in the system, are stimulants. The first of these is, I. HEAT. The ancient Romans prolonged life by retiring to Naples, as soon as they felt the infirmities of age coming upon them. The aged Portuguese imitate them, by approaching the warm sun of Brazil, in South-America. But heat may be applied to the torpid bodies of old people artificially. 1st. By means of the _warm bath_. Dr. Franklin owed much of the cheerfulness and general vigour of body and mind which characterised his old age, to his regular use of this remedy. It disposed him to sleep, and even produced a respite from the pain of the stone, with which he was afflicted during the last years of his life. 2. Heat may be applied to the bodies of old people by means of _stove-rooms_. The late Dr. Dewit, of Germantown, who lived to be near 100 years of age, seldom breathed an air below 72°, after he became an old man. He lived constantly in a stove-room.