to the employment of hot air or vapour, the patient being in bed in a recumbent position. There are simple contrivances by which this kind of bath can be readily obtained without trouble. This simple remedy is too often neglected in cases where free perspiration so produced would prove of great value.

A modified kind of shampooing,—consisting of friction over the skin, and kneading of the deeper textures, muscles, and joints,—is a very useful proceeding to remove the stiffness and immobility, and the sense of fatigue after slight exertion, often experienced. This process will often remove the pains in the loins besetting elderly people, as well as impart elasticity to the limbs and agility to their movements.

A tranquil mind, well-selected and arranged diet, moderation in the use of wine and other stimulants, exercise short of fatigue in favourable states of the weather, confinement to a warm house in cold or wet weather, well-warmed and ventilated sleeping apartments, clothing adapted to the seasons, maintenance of the animal heat of the body, particularly of the lower extremities, careful avoid

ance of external influences tending to produce disease, malaria, and the like; judicious bathing, to secure a healthy skin,-these are the principal points claiming the attention of aged persons, even when enjoying the best health.

To these must be added, immediate recourse to the Physician when any overt disorder or suffering is experienced.

My purpose is not to teach elderly people to treat themselves when ill; but, in the following pages, to deal with infirmities besetting them, which are generally borne without an effort to obtain relief, being regarded as either too insignificant, or as inevitable and irremediable evils. In some instances, such conditions or changes in the system as would be sure to bring, in a longer or shorter time, disorders and fatal disease if neglected, are shown to be amenable to simple and easily-employed measures.

The question may now be asked, whether there is any probability, or even possibility, of the discovery of a physical agent capable of completely arresting the changes in the system constituting ageing, or preserving the integrity of the body

and all its parts with the vigour of youth and middle-age up to the extreme limit of life?

This question is by no means an idle one. If, a few years since, it had been asked whether it were possible for any thing or process so entirely to suppress feeling that the limbs could be amputated without pain, such a question might well have been deemed visionary, and treated with contempt. But the use of anesthetics has now been practised so long, that their effects cease to excite our wonder, although they are really most wonderful. Not one or two agents with this property, but many, are now known.

Scientific ideas run long in grooves. When a new line is struck and followed, most unexpected discoveries are made. Inferences from analogy are easy or obvious; yet they are often most prolific in results. Inoculation of small-pox led to the discovery of vaccination. When the nature and properties of such agents as the ethers, chloroform, chloral, and its hydrate, are considered, together with their history and the manner in which they became known, we are greatly encouraged to hope for the discovery, at no distant

period, of an agent which shall effectually stay the changes in the system incident to age,-in short, arrest the progress of what we call decay. Whether the mineral, vegetable, or animal kingdom will furnish it, we cannot foretell. Our knowledge of the action of vegetable products on the human constitution, extensive as it is, is yet only of a minute proportion of the whole. Vegetable substances exert a wide and various healing influence. Opium, foxglove, colchicum, belladonna, tobacco, tea, etc., etc., are to a certain extent known. Thousands are partially recognised; but who shall say what future experiment may bring to light? (See Note G, p. 158).

It is, however, rather to a comparatively new class of bodies we look as the most probable source of the great desideratum. The chemistry of ternary and quaternary compounds, formerly designated organic chemistry, presents us with what is practically an illimitable number. To this class of substances belong the most energetic and manageable anæsthetics; and, either by enlightened inquiry, or as the result of some accident, it is almost certain some of them will be found

to exert a powerful action on the living system. Already, out of the line of anæsthesia, or narcotism, we have one of these artificially prepared substances, which promises to be a remedy for that habit of body termed the gouty diathesis-a condition so very frequently issuing in overt and fatal disease. (See paragraph on Gout.)

By the combined aid of physiology and chemistry, we are approaching very closely to an exact knowledge of every kind of material (proximate elements) forming the human body-their exact constitution, composition, and mode of formation. Some of them can be made artificially in the laboratory, a certain proof of science being on the right track. We may, therefore, look with confidence to these sciences to investigate completely the changes induced by diseases which are most frequently results of the intrusion of foreign substances with the air, water, or food, into the processes of formation, sustenance, or decomposition of the natural compounds. The changes in ageing are consequently not beyond our reach; and it is probable that a rational and scientific basis will be laid ere long for completely arresting them.