MR. PINNEY'S ALTERNATIVE—PREMATURE DEATH OR LONG LIFE.
THIS volume is a treatise more scholastic than medical, and more declamatorial than either, on the benefits of temperance, exercise, cleanliness, early rising, and control of the passions, in promcs ting health and securing long life. Except in its allusions, and a • slight sprinkling of more general physiological knowledge, the book might have been produced during the earlier age of the Roman empire, when it was the fashion "Curios simulant of Bacchanalia viverunt," except that it falls short of the rhetorical excellence of such declamations as have come down to us.
A full exposition of the organs and functions of our body, or ; of any one of them, may not have much influence upon the con. duct of the existing race; but it enlarges knowledge, its tenden- cies upon present practice are beneficial, it may set individuals upon partial reform, and its truth will probably modify the fashions of a future generation. But what end can be answered by a volume whose reasoning upon moderation and so forth is as old as philosophy; and whose strictly medical arguments are i-o general as not to strike with conviction, or so well known
as to have little novelty ? Mr. PINNEY too is more pedantic than a solemn physician with a wig and cane, and more rigid than
regimen. About our artificial pursuits he talks enough ; but he forgets the length of time they have continued, the hereditary effects produced upon all our constitutions by the adaptive power given us by Nature, (so much wiser than our doctors,) and the impossibility to the world at large of changing habits. A dee potic government backed by an army cannot alter the prac- tices of society—will those practices fall before an ill-written book ? And if truth and eloquence convince individuals, what can classes do, however elevated ? Can the senator or the lawyer, who has been up half the night, rise at daybreak, or assetnble guests round a noon-day board? Neither is the early rising practicable to the professional or commercial man without considerable effort and strength; and dinner at a " proper" hour is out of the question. Nay, let the independent invalid or the student follow such rigid rules, eschewing amusements and society, and changing the! plan of life to which he has been accustomed, and he will soon I find the depressing effect upon the nervous system more injurious ! than the indulgence of the accustomed stimuli.
This is theory : what say facts ? Amongst savages living in a -, state of nature, the Red Indians rank the first ; and, not to men•` tion the scanty numbers they maintain in proportion to their territory, they pass their lives in a state of violent exercise or listless indolence, to which our existence is equability itself; and the majority die prematurely. Go back to any state of civilization or refer to any existing people, and it will be found that more pee ple die, and earlier, amongst them, titan in highly-artificial Eng. land. Even here we find, that the comfortable and the luxuriate
live longer, and escape or resist disease better, than those wheats compelled to be temperate. " Every one for• himself." The no. Lions of low living, early rising, walks before breakfast, and a few hours sleep, are losing ground in the minds of most sensible medic cal men unless as applied to the robust few. The occasional in- stances of long livers having risen early, and taken great exercise,
besides being exceptions, may be non-sequiturs : their activity and early rising was very probably the consequence of a strong coati- tution, not the cause of it. Of course we do not assert that we are all living according to
nature, oc that we should not be better if we did. We only mean to say that this volume is tco general, too impracticable, and too pedantic.
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