Old Mortality

“ But sooner or later, either with warning or without it whether we think it or whether we do not think it, we shall have to die; and at every hour, at every moment, we approach nearer to our gallows even to that last illness, which will be the cause of our death.
At every age the houses, the streets, and the cities, are again inhabited by fresh people, and the old inhabitants are borne to the grave their last resting-place. ”

“ I have only known that if we were more careful, and more relentless in fighting evil, if we knew more of medical science, such things would not be. I know that a sound body, intelligent care and training, prolong life, and that the death of a very old person is neither sad nor shocking, but sweet and fitting. ”

“ THE DEATH SOLACE. After some years had passed, and my laws had time to operate, disease and crime were reduced to the smallest proportions. Life is now prolonged to a period which, before my reign, would have been thought fabulous, and people rarely die but of old age. ”

“ By means of this practice, which is warranted by science, as well as dictated by humanity, the grave has often been deprived for a while of its prey, and a prelude thereby exhibited of that approaching and delightful time foretold by ancient prophets, when the power of medicine over diseases shall be such, as to render old age the only outlet of human life. ”

“ We speak with bated breath and in whispered tones, and thought is busy with the past. It is impossible not to feel strangely moved while gazing on the crumbling relics of mortality committed ages ago, with pious care and many tears, to their last, long rest. ”

“ In the lore of centuries was there no spell whereby to be rid of it? no dark saying that taught how to make sure death should be death, and not a fresh waking? That the future is unknown, assures only danger! New circumstances have seldom to the old heart proved better than the new piece of cloth to the old garment. ”

“ But the thought that so many youths of goodly presence, warm with life, health, and confidence, were within so short a time cold in the grave, by various, yet all violent and unexpected modes of death, afforded a picture of mortality at which the mind trembled. ”

“ I would enquire of the most conversant in the study of bills of mortality, whether, in the most healthful climate, and in the best condition of life, they have ever found so small a number of deaths, within the same space of time? ”

“ Death from old age, from natural decay—usually spoken of as death without disease—is most improperly termed by writers an euthanasia. Alas! how far otherwise is the truth! Old age itself is, with the rarest exceptions, exceptions which I have never had the good fortune to meet with anywhere—old age itself is a protracted and terrible disease. ”

“ A fearful truth for medical men has been established by the table of mortality by Dr. Casper, published in the British Review. Of 1000 members of the medical profession, 600 died before their sixty-second year; while of persons leading a quiet life—such as agriculturists or theologians—the mortality is only 347. ”

“ We cannot hold mortality's strong hand. Good lords, although my will to give is living, The suit which you demand is gone and dead: He tells us Arthur is deceas'd to-night. ”

“ If the causes of death in certificates were given more exactly, this proportion would be without doubt still greater. These deaths cannot be fairly brought under the heading “Old age.” This is what we die of! ”

“ Is what we call the law of death anything more than the chance of disease? Is the prospect of my death, in its logical evidence,—as that evidence is brought home to me—much more than a high probability?
The strongest proof I have for my inevitable mortality is the reductio ad absurdum. Can I point to the man, in historic times, who has lived his two hundred years? What has become of past generations of men, unless it is true that they suffered dissolution? ”

“ For if the natural length of life were from seventy to eighty years, people would die, about that time, of mere old age. Now this is certainly not the case. If they die then, they die, like younger people, of disease ”

“ Wherever the pressure of the causes of death has yet been observed to be very great, there the line of mortality, or the average age of death, is below, what may be called, the line of vitality constituted by the average age of the living ”

“ It seems natural enough that people should be killed by violence or by diseases with an external or septic origin, or even by one particular organ wearing out and involving the whole body in the fate of its part. But why should people die of old age? ”

“ The people were dying out, and had got used to the dying-out process, and had formed habits of life adapted to this process: there was the great mortality among the children, the over-working of the women, the under-feeding, especially of the aged. ”

“ The old men, almost centenarians, whom we left in our dear native place, are living yet, and death has stricken down another victim, in the brightness of youth and future prospects, George D——, only six days older than I am, and who died far from his home. ”

“ The habits of order the system acquires in this period, continue to produce good health for many years afterwards; and hence bills of mortality prove that fewer persons die between forty and fifty-seven, than in any other seventeen years of human life. ”

“ Indeed, the very fact of the gradual prolongation of life shows that the hereditary predisposition to die at a certain age can be, to a great extent, overcome. The psychological effect of this dogma of the prepotence of heredity in determining the length of life is itself not only depressing but may readily become, as psychologists can best understand, a dangerous lethal agent with the old and cause those who have reached the span of years at which their forbears died to succumb to their troubles with less resistance. ”

“ Beginning with the earliest stages of life, and ending with the latest, I have pointed out some of the causes of the needless mortality and the prevalent imperfection of health, for which society is answerable. Slight and superficial as my treatment of the subject must be in a series of essays like these, I believe I have exhibited facts enough to show that we have all something to do in checking untimely death, both in our own persons and in those of our neighbours. ”

“ Such is the series of slow and partial deaths which, with the old man spared by disease, result in the last end of all. The individual who falls into the sleep of eternity in these conditions, dies like the vegetable which, having no consciousness of life, can have no consciousness of death. ”

“ For what else is old age but the expectation of death? Verily all the inhabitants of earth do die, young men and old, little children and adults, for no age or bodily stature is exempt from death. Why, then, is man tormented by this exceeding grief? ”

“ Yet, this result, now a practical certainty, was unknown to physicians of old, and it cannot be denied that, in former times, seeming death was quite often mistaken for true death. The annals of science have recorded a certain number of errors of this kind, many of which have resulted in the interment of unfortunate wretches who were not dead. And for one of these mistakes that chance has brought to light either too late, or in time for the rescue, even then, of the victim, how many are there, particularly in times of ignorance and carelessness, that no one has ever known! ”

“ For when they considered the matter, the men of old, who made wise laws, believed that there is the greatest possible difference between life and death and thought that each of these two states has customs and practices peculiarly appropriate to it. ”

“ It is only when they are between ninety and a hundred that people die of old age; die, I mean, without suffering from any disease, or showing any special signs of their condition, such as a struggle, death-rattle, convulsion, pallor,—the absence of all which constitutes euthanasia. The natural length of human life is a hundred years ”

“ So great was the mortality that none could be hired to bury{26} the dead. No sooner was a man’s breath out of his body, than his friends took him to the church and buried him, without any funeral service, as best they could. ”

“ We shall conclude, by pointing out the most celebrated treatises on human propagation, existence, mortality, and morbid devastation, by several philosophers. This is the epoch of a new science in politicks, philosophy, and medicine. Meritorious and successful efforts have been made to calculate the prospects of life and death, as the chances on dice, or the blanks and prizes in a lottery wheel. Graunt, somewhat later than the middle of the last century, first wrote a treatise on the London bills of births and mortality, and was followed soon after by Petty, King, and Davenant. ”

“ To go through this process without disturbance from disease is to die of old age. This is, we are told, about all that is known about the decline and death of organised bodies. It is enough to guide us in observing the facts and appearances of old age. ”

“ In the presence of ancient things, the link between all mortality seems most strongly felt. We perceive our association with the dead more strongly. The character and habits of thought of the person, of course, render it a more distinct or obscure perception ”

“ We noticed one old man who had lost all his family in one of those epidemics, walking aimlessly among the graves, and we were told that he spent most of his time there, no doubt in fancied communication with the spirits of the departed. ”

“ Now it is to be considered here that children and ancient people make up, one time with another, at least one-third of our bills of mortality, and our assurances lie upon none but the middling age of the people, which is the only age wherein life is anything steady; and if that be allowed, there cannot die by his computation above one in eighty of such people every year; but because I would be sure to leave room for casualty, I will allow one in fifty shall die out of our number subscribed. ”

“ Their old men, whose tenacity of life was a source of displeasure to them, they hurried into their graves, reversing the ancient sequence of death and burial; and little children, who had not begun to make any figure in life, they sent too hastily to their last accounts. ”

“ Each period of life has to furnish its special toll. If we look at the mortality among men or women for a period of years, we shall see this phenomenon very clearly. In the following table we see the deaths of men from cancer, in England, at each ten-year age-period. ”

“ The bodies of the two men lay together, side by side, in the mortuary, the one white and slender, but laid rigidly at rest, the other looking as if every moment it must rouse into life again, so young and unused, from a slumber. ”

“ We hurried on the funeral that I might go home with Cousin Frank that evening. I pulled up the tombstone from the head of Caspar Hauser's grave and made an epitaph on the other side for Bay. There might not be another slate broken in the family for months. At the present rate of mortality among my pensioners, it behooved me to be economical. ”

“ If a mortality table of the usual form is deduced from these suppositions, out of 212 persons alive at the age of 3, 2 will die every year up to 53, 3 in each of the ten years from 53 to 63, 4 in each of the next ten years from 63 to 73, and 6 in each of the next seven years from 73 to 80, when all will be dead. ”

“ The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to the young. ”

“ I should think the fact that the medical man is always face to face with mortality”—he pointed to a suspended skeleton in the corner—“and all the other big fundamental things like birth and pain, ought to give him a sort of sense of proportion and make him sensitive to the beauties of life. ”

“ This may be defined as the pro portion of the persons of that age who would die in the course of a year, if the intensity of the mortality remained constant for a year, and the number of persons under obser vation also remained constant, the places of those who die being constantly replaced by fresh lives. ”

“ The aboriginal Luh-N’zehtsze believe that health depends on the cleanness of the bones of departed kinsmen. Accordingly, when a man has been in the grave a year he is exhumed and his bones are carefully washed; and whenever any of his family are sick the same operation is at once performed, no matter how long or how short the time since he was buried.439.1 Even in Europe we have the well-known superstition that the state and appearance of a corpse before burial indicate whether other deaths in the family are to follow, as if it be limp, or the eyes cannot be closed, and so forth. ”

“ Here was the sole surviving specimen of what in the Past was the best that the men and women could expect—namely, to be spared until the age of seventy-five, and then to linger on afflicted with miserable diseases and, slowly or swiftly, to be tortured to death. ”

“ What benefit in the future existence was in old time thought to accrue to those whose bodies had been duly dissolved, and to be withheld from revenants, is a question which may conveniently be adjourned for a while. First we must verify the results obtained from the study of the abnormal by consideration of the normal; we must see whether ordinary funeral usage has had for its sole object the dissolution of the dead in the interests of the dead; and what, if any, distinction has been made between inhumation and cremation as a means of securing that object. ”

“ With its divine proof, Science reverses the evidence of material sense. Every quality and condition of mortality is lost, swallowed up in immortality. Mortal man is the antipode of immortal man in origin, in existence, and in his relation to God. ”