I have often been asked about the use of alcohol and tobacco. My friend, Dr. Alex M. Burgess, has a standard answer: “Tobacco may get you into trouble with your arteries; alcohol with the police.” As for tobacco, it has a definite and demonstrably damaging effect on blood flow and is contra-indicated in some diseased conditions. But here we are not dealing with disease but rather with healthy oldish men, and to no one who has reached the age of sixty-five or better and is satisfied with life as he is living it would I advise a change in habit as regards smoking, beyond the general suggestion of moderation.

Alcohol presents a similar picture. Used with moderation and judgment as we may see many good citizens doing, it should not be the cause of trouble. That “a man is a fool if he drinks before he is fifty, and a fool if he does not after fifty” is, as far as the second part of the statement is concerned, probably complete hooey. Used in moderation, alcohol doubtless adds to the joy of life in many people without damage, and if we stick to our plan of “moderation” we probably will do well.

What about work; keeping going, staying on the job? Work that has been interesting, time consuming and a main occupation during life? Should we quit? Can we retire? There is a strong modern attitude that just this should be done; that old people serve no sociological function. Almost everybody not self-employed is automatically dropped according to rigid schedules. It seems to me all a part of the over-regimentation of our times. The presumption that all people age at the same rate is just as ridiculous as the idea that they have special diseases as they grow older, expressed in the word, geriatrics, the diseases of old age. Dr. Robert T. Monroe recently brought out a book on Diseases In Old Age. You will notice that he said “in,” which shows care in phrasing his title, for he says, “There are no diseases of old age; there are only diseases in old people.” Most of the diseases of those who have had many birthdays are chronic ones. It used to be said that half a dozen “chronics” paid a physician’s expenses.

It was formerly thought that old people must be allowed to vegetate, that they should give up their ordinary activities, be wrapped up warmly, and their diet restricted. Even Sir William Osier quoted advice to the aged that they should gradually reverse their menu in the manner in which they had increased it in infancy until at the last they should subsist on milk. Nowadays if an octogenarian relishes corn beef and cabbage and his digestion seems good, a wise physician will allow it on his bill of fare.

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GENERAL HEALTH