(From a Chaldean term, etta, time, - age,) one life; an hundred years; also a certain stage of lige. An age in history, or as relating to the life of man, is not, however, so extensive. It has usually been considered as the space of thirty years only; and Nestor, who is said to have lived three ages, has been only accounted ninety years old. The ancients reckoned six stages of life; viz. pueri-tia, childhood, which is the fifth year of our age; adolescentia, youth, reckoned to the eighteenth, and G 2

Ae Th 44 AE T H properly so called to the twenty-fifth year; juventus, reckoned from the twenty-fifth to the thirty-fifth; vi-rilis AEtas, manhood, from the thirty-fifth to the fiftieth; senectus, old age, from fifty to sixty; De-crepita AEtas, decrepid age, which ends in death. Blanchard.

In a more strictly medical view, the ages are, however, differently divided; and the constitution changes according to a septenary period. At the age of seven, it seems to have attained its first stage. The form begins to appear; the character of the mind to be distinguishable. At fourteen, the period of puberty commences; and at twenty-one, such is the established state of mind and body, that the law rescues the man from pupillage. Little change occurs at twenty-eight; but at thirty-five the acme of strength and intelligence is, by general consent, obtained. The two next periods include the stages of firm and robust health; and few begin to decline even at forty-nine. At fifty-six age begins to steal on, and the sixty-third year is supposed to be a period of peculiar danger. The threescore years and ten are consummated at the next period, and all beyond is declining health and vigour.

Every age hath its diseases; and Hippocrates observes, that those of youth, continuing after puberty, are difficult to cure. In infancy and old age, many object to the use of medicine; but, as in both these stages there is great infirmity, so there is a great scope both for the practice and the improvement of the medical art; neglect bespeaks an equal ignorance and inhumanity: some disorders may be radically cured, and all may be palliated. Infancy may be aided in its advances, and the infirmities of age may be retarded.