Note 50 — EXERCISE.

“There is no rule more essential to those who are advanced in Life, than never to give way to a remission of Exercise. By degrees the demand for exercise may shrink, in extreme old age, to little more than a bare quit-rent; but that quit-rent must be paid, since life is held by the tenure.

“Whoever examines the accounts handed down to us of the Longest Livers, will generally find, that to the very last they used some exercise, as walking a certain distance every day, &c. This is mentioned as something surprising in them, considering their great age; whereas the truth is, that their living to such an age, without some such exercise, would have been the wonder. Exercise keeps off obstructions, which are the principal sources of diseases, and ultimately of death. Motion then is the tenure of life; and old people who humour or indulge an inclination to sloth and inactivity, (which is too apt to grow upon them on the least encouragement), act as unwisely as the poor traveller, who, bewildered in trackless snow, and surprised by a chilling frost, instead of resisting the temptation to sleep, suffers it to steal upon him, though he knows, that, by its fatal blandishments, he can never expect to wake again, but must inevitably perish.”—Institutes of Health, p. 24.