Whilst great energy and vast sums of money are expended on experiments in mechanics, electricity, etc., the means of arresting disease and prolonging life are left to haphazard individual efforts, seldom or never rewarded.

Jenner's case is singular. Philanthropy is in complete subjection to fashion and precedent. Still I feel assured if the public could be brought to apprehend the prospect of success by investigations instituted with the object of discovering the means of prolonging human life, pecuniary aid would be forthcoming. It is only by wellconcerted efforts, and having definite ends in view, that our present science can be made available for the purpose. Its processes are very costly, both in time and money, but in a country where wealth so abounds, the latter ought not to be the obstacle. There are men, too, quite capable and qualified, but they are necessarily engaged in other pursuits, whilst most erroneous ideas on the subject generally prevail. At some future time, the indifference and neglect of the present will excite

remark and wonder.

In the meantime we must proceed in another

direction, guided simply by experience and such analogies as may be found and accumulated by observation. Much has already been done, but very few have the full benefit of the knowledge already obtained.

A healthy and vigorous state of every part and every organ is essential to the health and wellbeing of the whole system. And as ageing-or what is the same to our means of observation -begins sometimes locally, and sometimes over the system generally, we first look for the local degeneracy, and, finding none to call for special remedies, we address ourselves to the entire system. We have many and most valuable agents capable of invigorating and imparting tone to the whole. And these, judiciously selected and combined, and administered with a full knowledge and control over the diet, regimen, and habits of a patient, will greatly ameliorate the effects, if not retard the advance, of ageing. He must have had little experience who has not seen this influence exerted by well-selected remedies.

The special disorders of the system, and those commencing locally, will be described in the sections following.

RECUPERATIVE POWER-VIS MEDICATRIX-LIFE.

We have one well-established fact, highly encouraging in the research for means to arrest ageing, a fact at once very curious and instructive. It is that the natural healing, or recuperative power termed vis medicatrix natura, to which the physician and surgeon look in patients at every period of life as an essential element in the success of their arts, remains in the system in old people until a very great age. By virtue of this power we see broken bones unite, the assaults of disease resisted, and recovery occurring after considerable injuries and severe attacks. And it may fairly be inferred that the changes, degradation, and decay in age, are disorders and unnatural incidents of that epoch of life, inasmuch as we see the efforts of this power exerted to resist and control them.

Thus the tastes and appetite of elderly people vary from those of youth and middle age, guiding the choice of food and its amount, and to the kinds and quantity of stimulants, and other drinks. Animal food, aromatics, bitters, the

alliaceous tribe of vegetables are generally preferred, and a due supply, with other items of living, tends greatly to check or keep the changes of age in abeyance. The desire for mental and bodily repose, sensitiveness to cold, etc., etc., point in the same direction.

Science has not at present obtained any clue to the mystery of life. The difference between a living and a dead or lifeless thing, is obvious enough. We recognise life as an attribute of organisms-bodies with a mechanical arrangement of their parts, and in other conditions or states. Life exists without sense or motion in vegetables, in seeds, in eggs; with feeling and motion, but without thought in many animals, with instinct added in others, and with superadded faculties in some; in man only associated with mind. Life in organisms is an individual thing, special and peculiar in every species. In the more complicated animal structures there is but one life. Destroyed in any considerable part, it ceases throughout the whole. There is no such thing as a diffused or general life. In this it strongly contrasts with electricity, caloric, light, although

there is a certain analogy with it and these bodies or forces. They are moreover all essential to the continuance of life, but so also is water, and more. or less other matters of a grosser and ponderable nature. It is as absurd and false to represent electricity or heat as being identical with life, as it would be to identify it with water, or phosphorous, or iron, or the materials which it animates. The term protoplasm has been applied to material not only always present with life as its invariable tegument, but imagined to be independent and separate from organized species.

Inasmuch as we know, as a matter of fact, that life exists in connection only with certain compound substances made up of a few elements, we must take this as an ultimate truth admitting no explanation. We may call these compounds protoplasm, or bioplasm if we like, but these terms explain nothing. People pretend to define life just as our ancestors used to define light, deceiving themselves with words. Life is essentially something per se. It cannot be transferred from species to species, or individuals to individuals. It is transmitted by descent. It flows in species