It would naturally be expected that _wounds_ and _fractures_ of bones would heal more slowly in the old than in the young, and, according to Carrel and Ebeling,[192] the cicatrization of human wounds varies inversely, if accurately measured, with the age of the patient; Humphry, however, found that, provided sloughing did not occur, wounds and ulcers in the aged heal as quickly as in middle life, and that the failure of union in intracapsular fracture of the neck of the femur is due to want of apposition and not to the age of the patient. In some respects the _reaction to drugs_ in the senescent body is different from that in ordinary adult life. In old people absorption from the alimentary canal is slow and this is particularly so with gelatin-coated pills and drugs, such as cinchona, containing tannin, which should therefore be avoided. The physiological response to drugs is slower and more prolonged than in early life, so that for this reason and from the frequency of constipation an accumulated action is thought to be more likely to occur in the aged. It is sometimes said that large doses are not borne well by the old and that morphine is dangerous as it is in infants, but Nascher[193] states that if, in order to obviate the paralysing effect of morphine on a weakened respiratory centre, atropine is given before the morphine so that their action can be timed to coincide, instead of giving them at the same time when the effect of the atropine comes later, morphine can be given in the same doses as in maturity. Purgatives may be required in larger doses than in ordinary practice. According to Leonard Williams[194] bromides are likely to produce mental confusion in old people and if persisted in, even in ordinary doses, may be followed by vascular thrombosis and permanent impairment of the intellectual powers. Sedatives and hypnotics when necessary should be given in small doses and discontinued as soon as possible; but they may be necessary for restlessness which would otherwise seriously exhaust the failing strength. VIII THE DESCRIPTION OF OLD AGE IN THE TWELFTH CHAPTER OF ECCLESIASTES