SECRET TO OLD AGE

Shannon News, 3 August 1926, Page 3

SECRET TO OLD AGE

AID TO LONG LIFE. SCIENCE AND FAT I^ORR. ...‘ \ Two men living on different sides of the Atlantic have given formulae for reaching a ripe old age. One, an American professor, pins his faith to science as the factor, while the other a villager in Sussex, advocates rat pork as the best agent to increase the allotted span. Dr. W. Durant .formerly professor of philosophy at Columbia University, says that man, in his constant battle against nature, will eventually win out, and may even overcome death. Science, he says, is already lengthening the span of life, and within the next hundred years, centenarians will become quite common. “But I can not say positively that • men will live forever; I merely wish to point out that eternal life is not an impossibility,” he explained. Admitting that the age when man will cease to die may have its inconveniences, tbe professor said there was nothing ither in science or. m philosophy inconsistent with the idea of eventual immortality of the body. “Death is a scheme of Nature,” he said, “for making room for the young But I suppose that if man ever conquers death., he will by that time cease to grow old and retain the vigor of youth.” John Sand’s Opinion. While Dr. Durant was thus giving his. views, a man who will soon celebrate his 100th birthday at the little village of Bunvash, in Sussex, was declaring that there was nothing to equal good, old, homely fat pork as an aid to length of days. He is John Sands, the father or seven “children,” the eldest of whom is seventy-seven years of age. Four of his family ar still living. Mr. Sands worked regularly bn a farm until' ne was ninety-sevbn years of age, and In all that time was hardly ever ill. He began at the age of nine, earning sixpence' a day. He was paid only 1/4 a day when he was twenty. “When I and my wife were, bringing up our fapiily,” said Mr. Sands to an interviewer, “we always had a pig in the sty. People would live longer if they ate more pork. Half of every pig- we killed had to be sold to pay for the salt for curing it, as salt was £1 a bushel. “Tea in those days was sixpence an ounce, cheese fourpencc a pound, butter sixpence a pound, and best bacon also sixpence a pound.”