The least miserable
among them appear to be those who turn to dotage and entirely lose their
memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want
many bad qualities which abound in others....At ninety, they lose their
teeth and hair; they have at that age no distinction of taste, but eat
and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The
diseases they were subject to still continue, without increasing or
diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellation of things,
and the names of persons, even of those who are their nearest friends
and relatives. For the same reason they never can amuse themselves with
reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the
beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived
of the only entertainment whereof they might otherwise be capable....
They are despised and hated by all sorts of people; when one of them is
born, it is reckoned ominous, and their birth is recorded very
particularly....They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and
the women were homelier than the men Beside the usual deformities in
extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion
to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a
dozen I soon distinguished which was the eldest, although there was not
above a century or two between them.
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