It is a remark extant from the rough times, when famine was more frequent than now, that the older a human being is the better deficiency of food is borne. Old men suffer least from abstinence,1 and benefit therefore most from temperance in eating. Everybody who has passed the age of fifty, or thereabouts, with a fairly unimpaired constitution, will act wisely in diminishing his daily quantity of solid food. There is less demand for the materials of growth, and consequently animal food should bear a smaller proportion than heretofore to vegetable, and it is mainly in that ingredient of the diet that reduction should be effected. Neglect of this rule in declining years is often punished by gout-a disease attributable to excess of nitrogenous aliment, and for this reason common to elderly men.

In the autumn of life, the advantages derived from fermented liquor are more advantageous, and the injuries it can inflict less injurious, to the body than in youth. The effect of alcohol is to check the activity of destructive assimilation, to arrest that rapid flux of the substance of the frame which, in healthy youth, can hardly be excessive, but which, in old age, exhausts the vital force. Loss of appetite is a frequent and a serious symptom in old age. It usually arises from deficient formation of gastric juice, which, in common with other secretions, diminishes with years. It is best treated physiologically rather than by drugs.