ON GROWING OLD.
The biologist discusses the problem of old age in a way which would sufficiently astonish the learned author of “ He Senectute. Attempts to explain why we grow ! old are many and multiform but none of the explanations, unfortu - nately, help us to retain our youth. It may be some consolation, however, to know something of the process, and Professor Minot comes tonvard with the unexpected assertion that old age when once it has set in is the period of slowest decline. We begin to feel old in our bones. The elastic cartileges of youth disappear —a process, ot course, which is continuous from birth to death. Worse than this is a change in the bony structure. Young bone is in part fdled and held together by a spongy structure which givfs it freedom and firmness. In age this disappears, leaving the bones liable to crack. Then the muscles as a whole, and also their constituent fibres, become smaller, leaving our youthful hose a world too wide for our shrunk shank. The walls of the lungs stiffen and grow thicker, making respiration less efficient. The heart curiously grows bigger, for it has harder work to do. driving the blood through arteries now subject to the thickening and hardening called sclerosis ; and so the pulse increases in extreme of age. The mean frequency of the pulse at birth is 134: by the time we are 14 it has fallen to 87 ; from 21 to 55 years old it stands at about 72; and it then slightly increases up to 79. Like the muscles, the brain dwindles in weight. Its average from 20 to 40 is 1409 grams, and from 40 to 90 it falls to 1330 grams. Veracity compels one to add that woman’s brain weighs less all the time, and loses more in proportion at the close. There is, however, always a latent power to repair in any organism, and this is what keeps us going in old age —a power said to be much greater than is generally supposed. _ Yet, in spite of this, old age dwindles away, and Metchnikoff has summed it up in one word as atrophy. There are, however, other epigrammatic formulas. For instance, the dictum of Olser, that a man is as old as his arteries; for he infers that the atrophy of age is due to the impaired circulation following on sclerosis. Metchnikoff. it will be remembered, thinks men age because our phagocytes turn against us, and that in various ways fermentative processes go on in us, giving rise to toxns which insiduously poison us. Lactic acid stops such fermentation to some extent, and the drinking of sour milk has been recommended in modern times as an up-to-date substitute for Cicero’s philosophy. A curious theory has been put forward by one Muhlmann. As we grow (unhappily) bulkier we present less proportionate surface to the air; and this affects adversely our respiration and temperature. Whatever it is in us that grows old we share it with j the other mammals ; horses, dogs, and cats exhibit the same symptoms, but similar though not identical changes are also met in fish and frogs ; indeed, if you are an animal without either lungs or arteries you grow old all the same. In insects there is a hardening of the outer cases as with our bones; and the brain of the bumble bee has been shown by much ingenious work to degenerate just as does our own. Minot stresses another point of view—the conflict of the tissues, such as those of nerves and brain, hold their own in the internal struggle for existence ; but as old age creeps on the less complex connective tissue grows more rapidly and makes inroads on the higher forms. It is one of the penalties of greatness that an animal suffers from old age the more highly its structure is developed—the unicellular animals, which reproduce merely by dividing into two halves, can scarcely be said to die at all, unless they happen to be eaten. And this probably touches the root of the matter. Each of us is a complex machine, to a large extent built up out of parts originally meant for something else. It works well for a time, but there is a limit to its service, and that limit is reached when any of the important parts fail to work together. This was Nature’s irony: as soon as her creatures began to climb the tree of life they began to die ; but it was not meaningless irony, for only through the long succession of living forms, and through death was the ascent possible; so that Weismann regards the evolution of death as one of the masterpieces of Nature’s handicraft; and that paradox is not pessimism—but a promise.— Sydney Morning Herald.
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3770, 7 September 1907, Page 3
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801ON GROWING OLD. Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3770, 7 September 1907, Page 3
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