DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 73, 17 June 1927, Page 16

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE SECRET OF LONG LIFE (Copyright, 1927.) J)\ C. H. MAYO, of Rochester, one of the foremost physicians of the United States, lectured recently on How to Grow Old Gracefully. He mentions five points: Begin taking care of yourself when young; Have health examinations once a year; Avoid excesses; Develop an avocation preferably along some line that brings you in contact with Nature; Live in communities protected by efficient public health laws. He said that the principal danger to long life at present is our ability to gratify our desires too easily and our inability to readjust ourselves to new ways of living. The secret of all life is adjustment. Not that animal that was the strongest lived the longest in former times, but the animal which most easily adjusted itself to the conditions around it. Animal life has all sorts of ways of adjustment. In cold climates animals grow heavy fur. Some change their colour to conform to their surroundings. The secret of all longevity seems to be adjustment. Proper sanitary conditions also have much to do with long life. Whereas in the middle ages a man lived on the average only twenty yeajrs now he lives to a much greater age. ! Our gifted grandmothers were old at fifty. Now some of them at fifty are just stepping out.