Old Age; The Results of Information Received Respecting Nearly Nine Hundred Persons Who Had Attained the Age of Eighty Years, Including Seventy-Four Centenarians (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1889. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. THE MALADIES OF OLD PEOPLE. The following remarks, like the reports in the two preceding Chapters, are based upon the analyses derived from the accounts of 824 persons, between eighty and a hundred (340 men and 282 women between eighty and ninety, and 92 men and 110 women between ninety and a hundred). I may first observe that, with regard to Diseases and Failures of Particular Organs, the proportion of immunities from them was in favour of the women, amounting to 55 per cent., as compared with 35 per cent, in the case of the men. The affections of the urinary organs especially preponderate, as we might expect, in the men. They are, indeed, more than twice as frequent in the men than in the women, amounting to 42 per cent., whereas in the women they were only 20 per cent. In the women, brainaffections are more frequent than in the men, being in the proportion of 16 per cent, in the women to 7 per cent, in the men. But the failures in the heart and in the lungs are about equal in the two sexes. It is worthy of note that 85 per cent, of the whole number are reported to be free from any evidence of rheumatic affections of the hands. The hands were selected for observation because their condition is readily ascertained and because that is a fair gauge of the rest of the system. Of the various maladies, Bronchitis is the dominating one, and, superadded to debility, it is oftener than any other assigned as the cause of death. It is, indeed, including the common winter-cough, a very frequent malady in this climate at all times of life. In the aged it is liable to become persistent; and a slight increase coming upon the enfeebled circulation and general weakness of the old person often produces a fatal result. The demands on the activity of the respiratory...