CENTENARIANS’ CLUB

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 846, 14 December 1929, Page 14

CENTENARIANS’ CLUB

SECRETS OF LONG LIFE OLD AGE AND GOOD HEALTH Ft is not at all ridiculous to say, when you stand at a certain door in the vastness of Cromwell Road, I,ondon: ‘‘Good-morning. I was thinlc ing about living to be a hundred,” writes a special correspondent of the London "Sunday Times.” The girl at the door does not hesitate. She does not even smile. She says quite naturally, “Will you come in?” shows you to a chair, and asks you to wait. You are in the headquarters of the Centenarians’ Club, from which incipient Methuselahs are planted out all over Britain, the Continent, and Canada (it has over 2,000 members)

in a kind of human forestry. I mean, the results are not seen till a long time ahead. But do not expect to find an office where white beards dangle over the typewriters. Do not expect simpering bald pates to pester you with anecdotes. This old-age business is quite a youthful affair. I learn from the president, Dr. , Maurice Guest, the youngest man of 1 60 I have ever seen, who enters with - the briskness of a schoolboy. When he has swept me to another ’ room, where we bounce into chairs, 5 he says in his rich voice, which, on the wireless, would sound like an - undergraduate’s: i “Young men—it is so —join us more 3 than any. Who knows? They are 3 happy and full of vigour; they do not want life to end —ever. The older 3 man has some trouble; life is not - so attractive. But let me tell you t why it is: the older man has probably 1 contracted an illness. If he had not ) that, and you again asked him he

would say: ‘Yes, please. I want to join.’ To him old is is just pain. “Our club aims to achieve longevity with bodily health and a clear mind. Now, if you, for example ” THE SECRET “What w-ould I have to do?” 1 say. “Would I have to give up smoking, drinking, or other pernicious habits? Would I have to eat nothing but brown —or is it white —bread?” “Aha! That is the old fear,” Dr. Guest replies. “Y'ou would not. No. indeed.” I lean forward with more interest in the prospect of personal antiquity. “Let me tell you. The art of living j ong —makrobiotic —goes back many centuries. One of the great books on the subject was written in the ISth century by Hufeland. And about forty years ago Sir George Humphry took a census of centenarians. He found people became very old in all sorts of conditions, that it was silly to make rules about diet, and so on.

“Then what does one do? Just trait with one eye on the calendar?” I ask. "This. First, a member binds himself to exercise moderation in alf matters of living, but he need not go without alcohol or tobacco. Secondly, he must promise to attend to every bodily ill at once. Just imagine—if you lived in the same house for sixty years and never saw that it was repaired, you would be surprised if something did not happen to it. “Well—why should the body be any different? Sometimes your doctor will pooh-pooh what you tell him; but you must insist on treatment, on its seriousness. There is a tendency for our profession to regard the proverb, ‘Prevention is better than cure,’ only theoretically, to say, ‘Take no notice, the thing will right itself.’ But do not allow that, not if you can avoid it. “The third point is: not lightly to undergo any drastic treatment whatever, whether of medicine or surgery. Members also undertake to spread these ideals among their friends and

other people. You see, we have no fads. We have no slogan. It is not so simple a matter.” I am told besides that a member pays any subscription he wishes, from half a crown upward, that he receives copies of lectures and other pamphlets, and, presumably, the encouragement of knowing he is one of a number making a cheerful defence against the years. ‘The others,” I then ask, “who are they? Among what class or profession shall 1 find contemporaries if 1 have a three-figure birthday?” “It used to be chiefly among people of humble circumstances that you found the very old,” Dr. Guest says. “Busy professional men had more wear and tear. Of course, there have been exceptions—Choiseul, the great chemist, who went to the opera in Paris on his 100th birthday; Gene id Higginson; Lord Haldane's mother. Our members are mostly such people as solicitors, business men, even doctors.” He tells me a sad paradox. “We

have few women members. They do not have the same longing for life after 50 that men have. And yet”—he spreads his hands over the arms of his chair—“it is they who more often live longer than men. Women centenarians are much the more common.” As I go away from the house, old age without faltering powers appears a great deal more pleasant and possible to think about. Indeed, I hardly feel a pang when the leaves, fallen from the plane trees rustle on the pavement at my feet. I have taken the long view of life.