LIFE EXTENSION.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 May 1920, Page 9

LIFE EXTENSION.

RENEWING OUR YEARS. ... 'London, Jan. 'IS. In a recent article on Medical Research and its hopeful avenues, reference was made to "Life Extension," as now successfully studied in New York. Inquiry as to how we may learn to renew our years seems appropriate in tlie beginning of a New Year, as also in the beginning of a week which sees the coming into force of the greatest health measure in history. Nevertheless, the obvious aspects of the subject, which are already in large degree understood, are not the essential theme of this article, as we shall see. The most obvious way in which to extend life is to discover and avoid the principal caufps vfliich adventitiously shorten it. That is well worth doing and is, in fact, the principal study of the Life Extension Institute of New York, a remarkable organisation, of the highest standing, with Mr. Taft as its President, and a steadily increasing scope of usefulness. Such a studv must evidently bo statistical and actuarial, and must be numerically very copious, if its results are to be valid." Already we may confidently make certain assertions.The first is the answer to the simple question, What is the commonest of all diseases? Tuberculosis, malaria, and other infections, might be named, hut the answer to which, elsewhere, I have committed myself, is premature senility, of whicli the reader had probably not thought. PREMATURE AGEING. This premature "ageing" has, of course, nothing to do with age, or the passage of time, as such. Time effects nothing, perhaps time is nothing. What matter are events and processes ? By far the ..commonest of those processes which prematurely age us are two, alcoholism and over-eating. The British and American evidence is now immense and overwhelming, clear and conclusive, which showed that even moderate drinking shortens life by several years. That is one of many reasons why, to conclude the present reference to that matter, I call Constitutional Prohibition, which eomes into force among a nation of 110,000,000 persons on Friday of this weak, the greatest health measure in/ history. As for over-eating, which also involves

chronic intoxication, and deterioration of tissue, importance is immense, and will doubtless he very exactly and in detail appraised in the United States when the. complicating alcoholic factor can be excluded, as, in effect, henceforth. Tlio inverse relation between girth of body and length of life lias, indeed, been already thoroughly demonstrated by insurance actuaries on both sides of the Atlantic; and the obscene outline of '-John Bull," Henry VIII'. and Father Christinas, our (hree typical figures, as Sir Victor Tt»r-ley used to observe, involves a definil '!y measurable reduction of vital expectation. It is now becorfiing the habit of Americans, over forty in especial, to consult the physicians of the Life Extension Institute, in v p9 P<>ct of their weight, their possible tendency lo lising bloodpressure—"A man is as old as his arteries", said Virchow—and similar signs in order that they may Jcarn what regimen, as of diet and exercise, will avert the ominous tendency.

PROLONGATION OP YOUTH. But all that, surely, we all know, nor need I discuss the various and effective measures, much as the avoidance of cold and worry, whereby the lives of the elderly may bo prolonged, or those which may indefinitely avert a second attack of cerebral haemorrhage when a first;, less than fatal, has given the warning. The research which I desire deals with deeper things than those, and is more worth while. The prolongation of ago is all very well, but I am for the prolongation of youth. Even in the womb we move surely toworks the tomb. We must grow up and grow old; we have ante-natal life, infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity, and senility. But the fact we all know in that the relative duration of certain of these is highly variable. Not merely are there extraordinary cases of longevity, nor the bizarre cases of progeria recently observed by Dr. Hastings Gilford, of Heading, where the skeleton is under-developed, the subject shows infantilism and may die in his teens with every symptonj of "old age"—but there are wide variations within what we call the normal. The lower races of mankind reach senility sooner. Lower types of our own high race, types often found in very high places, begin to be senile directly they cease to be puerile. There are differences independent of habit. They are often very markedly hereditary. What are the factors which determine them? It would be worth while to know. If we could agree upon the most desirable period of life and extend it, how trifling most other conceivable achievements would be! That period is surety youth or adolescense. Observe it in some such girl as those whom Shakespeare adored and drew. The whole world is to-day familiar with such an instance. See Miss Mary Pickford, aged about 27, playing as a very young adolescent with a host of real children, in "Daddy Longlegs," and compare her with other women of her "age," as we see them every day. • GLANDS AND VITAMINES Of course, these things have causes. Progeria, for instance, that dreadful acceleration of the normal life cycle, seems to be the opposite, in many particulars, of the disease called acromegaly, which is characterised by gigantism and an over-developed skeleton, and which is known to be due to morbid action of a ductless gland, called the. pituitary, at the base of the brain. Here is a' clue and we must follow it. Observe, further, that the action of the "vitamines" necessary for normal growth and development is probably upon the ductless glands, whose internal secretions are of leading importance in the development of the body. Here, indeed, is a clue. Already we have been able to arrest the normal development of experimental animals, by withholding certain foods containing vitamines, so that an early stage in their history may be prolonged for some weeks—a long time relatively to the normal life-span of such animals. As I have said elsewhere, "It is almost as if a minute and otherwise impercepible modification of the diet of a girl of twenty should cause her to be 'twenty' for another twenty years, and thereafter (on the resumption of an ordinary diet) | to develop in the ordinary way as if she were 'twenty' still. The lack of an infinitesimal something in her diet would ' have presented her with twenty extra, '•'cars of ever-burgeoning youth!"

THEME FOR RESEARCH.

Life, bio-ehemicaliy regarded, is "a series of fermentations." (Observe the qualification. There is a higher plane. Love lias been defined as "le contact des deuxi muqueuses," but also as "to be all made of faith and service." I am here on the lower plane, as real, but only the lower.) We are beginning to learn something of the ferments of "enzmes" that control the fermentations of life. The ductless glands make some of the®. The vitamines really the ferments of nutrition, and, since they are not really amines at all but were so-named by an error, we might call them trophozymes, I think, to indicate their real nature and function. (See The Lancet, January 3, pp. 64 et seq.) We are really just beginning to see how life may be extended in a sense worth working for —not merely by the avoidance of the things which shorten it, not merely by extra care of persons with one foot in the grave, not merely by the control of disease infections, but by the control of those internal processes whose sequence determines our life-cycle, from the growth of the embryo to the seventh age of man. Here is a theroe for research, expensive, difficult, exceedingly protracted; but offering what an incomparable prize for our children's children! This will never be the whole story, for we are more than physico-chemical phenomena. There is a higher and deeper life, of which our bodies are the organs; and there are many old persons who demonstrate that Youth is a State of the Soul.