Their Method Of Life Neither Secures Them Perpetual Health, Nor
Exposes Them To Any Particular Diseases.
There are physicians in
the Islands, who, I believe, all practise chirurgery, and all
compound their own medicines.
It is generally supposed, that life is longer in places where there
are few opportunities of luxury; but I found no instance here of
extraordinary longevity. A cottager grows old over his oaten
cakes, like a citizen at a turtle feast. He is indeed seldom
incommoded by corpulence. Poverty preserves him from sinking under
the burden of himself, but he escapes no other injury of time.
Instances of long life are often related, which those who hear them
are more willing to credit than examine. To be told that any man
has attained a hundred years, gives hope and comfort to him who
stands trembling on the brink of his own climacterick.
Length of life is distributed impartially to very different modes
of life in very different climates; and the mountains have no
greater examples of age and health than the low lands, where I was
introduced to two ladies of high quality; one of whom, in her
ninety-fourth year, presided at her table with the full exercise of
all her powers; and the other has attained her eighty-fourth,
without any diminution of her vivacity, and with little reason to
accuse time of depredations on her beauty.
In the Islands, as in most other places, the inhabitants are of
different rank, and one does not encroach here upon another.
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