1. FOOD- Food should be of a much less solid form than during the vigour of adult life. Just as nature provides fluid food during infancy before the teeth appear, so the loss of teeth, a common attendant upon old age, necessitates a return to a form of food that does not require mastication. Inattention to this point is, we believe, one of the most fruitful causes of the impaired digestion, weakness, and sufferings of the aged.
Frequently, artificial teeth cannot be tolerated, and the only path of safety lies in the adoption of an almost exclusively fluid diet. We have had many cases under care in which our advice on this point has been carried out with the most beneficial results.
2. REST- This is essential to the health and safety of the fragile frame of the age. The sports and exercises of youth, or the exertions of maturer age, would fracture the bones, rupture the tendinous portions of the muscles, or occasion a blood-vessel to give way. To the aged long-continued exercise and too little rest are highly unfavourable, the reparative processes being only slowly performed. Happily, the activities and athletic exercises of youth become distasteful to old persons, and the burdens of mid-day life are transferred to the succeeding generation, and they now seek and enjoy a condition of quiet and repose necessary to their present well-being.
3. WARMTH- In the winter season, when sudden changes of temperature are frequent, provision should be made for preventing the ingress of the cold, early morning air, and for maintaining a suitable temperature in the bedroom through the whole might. The temperature of the sleeping apartment should be kept at 60 degree to 62 degree, and measured by a thermometer, as the sensations of persons are not a sufficient guide. It no doubt often happens that the lonely encounter with death takes place in the stillness of the hour before sunrise, from a sudden access of cold air which the extreme feebleness of old age could not resist or endure. As before stated, cold seriously affects the aged, and it is a fact which excites frequent observation, that soon after the setting-in of severely cold weather, the obituaries in the public papers of persons in advanced life become unusually numerous. The winter of 1871-2 shows how temperature influences the mortality of the aged. The severity of the frosts of the early portion of the winter proved fatal to many aged persons, who, resembling the autumnal leaves, are easily shed; but the survivors enjoyed the exceptionally mild winter that followed, and many thousands of them remained alive who must have succumbed had the weather throughout continued severe. As a consequence of the mildness of the weather, the mortality of the first quarter of the year 1872 was considerably under the average. “An aged man with a sluggish heart goes to bed with a temperature, say, of 50 degree to 55 degree; in his sleep, were it quite uninfluenced from without, his heart and his breathing would naturally decline. Gradually, as the night advances, the low wave of heat steals over the sleeper, and the air he was breathing at 55 degree falls and falls to 40 degree, or it may be 35 degree or 30 degree. What may naturally follow less than a deeper sleep? Is it not natural that the sleep so profound shall stop the labouring heart? Certainly. The great narcotic never travels without fastening on some victims in this wise, removing them, imperceptibly to themselves into absolute rest inertia until life recommences out of death” (Richardson).
The fact that the coldest portion of the twenty-four hours is just before day break is one full of warning to the aged, as it is also to the feeble generally. How often has it been observed that the setting-in of grave or immediately fatal symptoms has coincided with this daily recurrence of cold! This fact gives force to our recommendation of striving, by keeping bedroom fires brightly burning at this juncture, to neutralize as far as possible the consequence of this low-temperature wave.
“With regard to the effects of temperature in inducing or averting disease, we note that such diseases as Bronchitis and Pneumonia diminish as the temperature of the year advances; that on the contrary, Diarrhoea is aggravated by heat, and that Apoplexy less frequently occurs in the summer than the winter months; and that Epileptic seizures, Paralytic strokes, and sudden deaths generally, are often registered during the prevalence of hail and snow storms, with the accompaniment of high winds; the cause simply being due to the fact that warmth favours the superficial circulation, and the inhalation of warm air soothes the mucous surfaces of the air-tubes whilst cold, by driving the blood to the internal organs, produces congestions, that lead to Apoplexy in weakened brains, and to fatal Syncope in weakened hearts. We have been asked many a time by patients whose brains suffer from Congestion, and whose hearts are weak, whether they might take a drive in the open air on clear, cold, frosty winter days, and we have invariably advised them to keep in warmth and comfort by their own firesides; we believe that such advice has lessened the risk of an Epileptic seizure, or a fainting attack, that ends with sudden death. There is a widespread idea that extreme cold is a healthy tonic for everybody; but we must beg for an exception to be made in favour of the very old and the very young, in as much as in both cases the vital powers are weak, and extreme cold being a great depressant, both old and young must inevitably suffer from its effects unless properly cared for. Warmer clothing, and warmth- producing food should therefore be the fitting antidotes to cold, together with the judicious rather than the unlimited, use of exercise in the open air.”- Homoeopathic Review.
A regulated temperature in his apartment, heat producing kinds of food, warm clothing, and other kindred measures, should therefore be adopted in the treatment of the aged.
4. MEDICINES- On this point we can offer no definite suggestions. The selection of remedies must be determined strictly according to the symptoms the patient may present, modified by any idiosyncrasy of constitution.
Thus the physical frame decays and man passes away, death terminating the journey of life, and the traveller welcoming the long repose as he had often welcomed sleep after the fatigues of the day. We have reason to believe that dying is as painless as falling asleep; a feeling of languor steals over the frame, and the tired form settles into a dreamless sleep. The general testimony of all who have experienced what it is to die, and have been able to record their experience, goes to prove that death is easy and exempt from all pain. William Hunter, in his last moments, said, “Had I strength to write, I would write how easy and delightful it is to die.” Having met with an accident which it was supposed had proved fatal, Montaigne said, on restoration to consciousness, “I thought that life hung upon my lips; and I closed my eyes to help me in expelling it; and I had a serene pleasure in the belief that I was passing away.” These statements fully accord with the observations we have repeatedly made at the death beds of patients. Persons who have been resuscitated after drowning, suffocation and strangling, and after all sensation had been lost, have asserted that, after the first shock, they experienced no pain. What is, therefore, often spoken of as the agony of death is probably purely automatic and unfelt. “Passing through nature to eternity,” the sense of death is most in apprehension. Why, then, if this be true, should death be regarded as “the cup of trembling,” and the event be signalized by the habiliments of mourning? When Nature puts on her death- robes, the autumnal forest assumes forms of beauty and even brilliancy; and departing day often crimsons the western horizon with glory; herein presenting striking contrasts in the manner in which death is received the nature and by man. “This flesh which we wear is the foliage of an immortal life, and there is no reason why it should not fade away in its season, still and peaceful as autumn leaves, that this interior life may flower forth a new in the glories of unending spring.
LICENTIATE OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS; MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS; LICENTIATE IN MIDWIFERY, LONDON AND EDINBURGH, ETC. PHYSICIAN TO THE READING AND BERKSHIRE HOMOEOPATHIC DISPENSARY.
Author of "The Stepping Stone to Homeopathy and Health,"
"Manual of Homoeopathic Treatment". Editor of "The Homoeopathic World."