PROLONGATION OF LIFE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 249, 20 April 1912, Page 9

PROLONGATION OF LIFE

lor 350 years (says Professor Voorhees, of Now York, the average duration of life lias been slowly on the increase. In 'the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this increase was about tour years .per century, but during the lirst tnree-fourths of the nineteenth century the rate -was increased to about nine years per century. This lengthening is going on at the rate of about seventeen years in Europe, and iu Prussia about twenity-seven years per centi'i'y. In France, in a population of about 38,000,000 people, 2.000,000 have reached the age of 70—that'is, about five per cent, of the total number. It would seem tlnu the great .strides in medical discovery and their application are here much in evidence; for in India, where medical progress is nearly unknown, tile average life span is onlv tweiuv-live years, and remains about stationary. It is possible that Ave may yet attain a general prolongation of life wol .| ( ] over equivalent to fifteen y,„>: for future medical discoveries. together with the cumulative inline,,,,, of hygiene, must g' ft, ith fell. I''or instance, as Professor lusher points out, when a pure water supply preve,lis death from typhoid, it prevents two or three times as many deaths Iron, the complications of u'piOK the c/lect* of prolongation tliiiilk.lj, ,but a large nunii.er of old men. bays. Melchnikoff: "Tin- old " ,:U 1 WJ " ,!0 l(lll S'L'l' be subject to loss of wm"? ry Z illtell, ' l ' lllal weakness; he I 1" ) l >lu tl > apply his great experi,l olio 1° '/""f' l ' ol "l llil ''<ted and most dolicaite parts of the social life" .Met nr'V I 1 l"'"l<>m«tion oils due to .strict obedience to hygienic laws, and quotes Liebig as savin, thai .1, Z7 01 b - v fi f'■•>» /r'?" 11,1 "f the civilis<ilion ot that nation.