The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
Philosophy
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
SIR,--Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant;
and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled
me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied
it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like
other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as the history of my
own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating little
animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the
vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. I double, however, the
Doctor's glass and a half of wine, and even treble it with a friend; but
halve its effects by drinking the weak wines only. The ardent wines I
cannot drink, nor do I use ardent spirits in any form. Malt liquors and
cider are my table drinks, and my breakfast, like that also of my friend,
is of tea and coffee. I have been blest with organs of digestion which
accept and concoct, without ever murmuring, whatever the palate chooses
to consign to them, and I have not yet lost a tooth by age. I was a hard
student until I entered on the business of life, the duties of which
leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil them; and now, retired,
and at the age of seventy-six, I am again a hard student. Indeed, my
fondness for reading and study revolts me from the drudgery of letter
writing. And a stiff wrist, the consequence of an early dislocation, makes
writing both slow and painful. I am not so regular in my sleep as the
Doctor says he was, devoting to it from five to eight hours, according
as my company or the book I am reading interests me; and I never go to
bed without an hour, or half hour's previous reading of something moral,
whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep. But whether I retire to
bed early or late, I rise with the sun. I use spectacles at night, but
not necessarily in the day, unless in reading small print. My hearing is
distinct in particular conversation, but confused when several voices
cross each other, which unfits me for the society of the table. I have
been more fortunate than my friend in the article of health. So free
from catarrhs that I have not had one, (in the breast, I mean) on an
average of eight or ten years through life. I ascribe this exemption
partly to the habit of bathing my feet in cold water every morning, for
sixty years past. A fever of more than twenty-four hours I have not had
above two or three times in my life. A periodical headache has afflicted
me occasionally, once, perhaps, in six or eight years, for two or three
weeks at a time, which seems now to have left me; and except on a late
occasion of indisposition, I enjoy good health; too feeble, indeed, to
walk much, but riding without fatigue six or eight miles a day, and
sometimes thirty or forty. I may end these egotisms, therefore, as I
began, by saying that my life has been so much like that of other people,
that I might say with Horace, to every one "_nomine mutato, narratur
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