Robert Saundby, M.D.,[153] has given us what is, to date, the best handbook, both for practitioners and for old people who are intelligently interested in conserving their life and strength, on the common infirmities and care of the aged, exclusive, for the most part, of nervous and psychic symptoms. He first describes normal old age, then its diseases in successive chapters--diathetic infections, and those of the circulatory, respiratory, digestive, and genito-urinal systems. Perhaps most practical are the dietaries he gives for different stages of old age and different diatheses. He commands a wide knowledge of Continental literature on the subjects he treats. He has a just sense of the dangers of stressing specifics from, for example, Pythagoras, who thought there was a special virtue for longevity in honey; Bacon, in sweating; Harvey, in avoiding acids; down to Blanchard, in sal volatile; blood drinking cures, olive oil, licorice, etc. He believes that Metchnikoff’s panacea and the undue stress laid by Lorand on thyroid therapy have not escaped the dangers of undue focalization. He allows a very wide latitude not only in regimen and exercise but food, condiments, and even stimulants, for the aged. No one can read his account of the changes that take place in each part and organ of the body as they are successively described and the very different treatments that each needs as it goes wrong, without a sense of the fatality with which these vast cohorts of life-quelling symptoms advance and, in view of the many strategies the lethal processes make use of to undermine the fortress of life, without experiencing a profound sense of the hopelessness of watching out in so many directions and realizing that, as differentiation proceeds in the different organs, any regimen helpful to one would almost certainly be harmful to others.