“YOUNGER MAN” BOGEY.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1922, Page 12

“YOUNGER MAN” BOGEY.

'' I ITHAGEDY OF ERRORS. POISON", NOT AGE,’ THE BRAIN'S ENEMY, In a recent article (says the Medical Correspondent of The Times) the advice was given to business men not to retire from their life's work unless absolutely compelled to do so by reason of illhealth. To this advice the objection has been raised: “May it not be the duty of a man to relinquish his post to a younger colleague?” The question is one which needs answering, for there can be no doubt that many older mdn are impelled to a course they do not at all wish to take by the fear that they may be hindering instead of helping the work they have at heart. The bogey of “the younger man” haunts them.

Who is this younger man, and why should it be supposed that his brain will better the performance of a tried veteran? The gnswer is that he is largely an imaginary person; Tie represents one of those curious tricks which an agile brain is always playing its possessor. Most doctors have listened to descriptions of “the younger man" from the lips of their middle-aged patients. Most of them have had no difficulty in recognising him. He is none other than the patient himself projected bsvek into his early days and beginning over again, so to speak. For an agile brain is always an agile brain, unless disease or poison overtakes it. Usually, however, it fails to realise that the quality of agility is inherent in itself. It tends to seek, for outside explanations.

When it is young it seizes on youth as the explanation. It persuades itself that its difficulties with the dull brains it encounters rise out of the fact that most of their possessors gre old. It declaims against “crusted age;” it vows that whatever may befall, it will not continue to thwart the dreams and ambitions and ideas of youth when its own turn to be old arrives.

■And that vow is renewed as time goes on. For what the vigorous mind has failed to realise is that in early days opposition is bound to come from age just as in later days it is more likely to come from youth. In early days youth, being contemporary, is easy to deal with. Age, oij the contrary, being established, must be overborne. Later on the active brain of age is hampered by the dullness not of the older but the “younger man.”

It was then that the early vow begins' to exercise its influence. The active brain argues that, after ail, probably it is growing dull; probably the young men have new ideas which they are anxious to carry into effect. xue old horror of unseeing, uninspiring age drives its victim from work of which he is still master.

The thing is often a tragedy. It rs almost always a tragedy of errors. For while the structure of the body grows old and physical strength declines, mental strength, in the presence of good health, tends rather to increase. There are young men and old men at 20, at 30, at 40. at 70. The young are always young, thta old always old, the dull always du© For the quality of alertness depends on the brain as a functioning organ rather than as a structure possessing young cells. Brain tissue is not of the Same quality as the tissues of the body, which age most readily. These latter—the hair, the skin, the connective tissue —are of lowly type; brain tissue is the highest of all the types. In its special evolution it has subjected everything to its main purpose. The tissues which age readily are capable of swift and energetic reproduction; the brain tissue is celibate. It does not reproduce. Wounds of the brain never heal. This celibacy seems to confer the power of resisting the old age which befalls the other tissues. The brain of a Kelvin preserves its clarity, its vigor to the end of life.

Thus the possessor of the active brain is not, as he imagines, deteriorating. Ail that is happening is that the dull brains which oppose him are now younger than fliey used to be. They are as dull as ever. For there is this quality of active brains that they recognise one another instinctively, and help rather than hinder one another.

In short, the real “younger mandoes not need to have his way mad« smooth for him. He strikes out fo: himself. It is no kindness to him to assist a process which needs no assistance. Still less is it any kindness to the work itself. More men ruin their life’s work by leaving it than by holding on. For, little as they may realise the fact, the work is a kind of extensiin? of their own minds. Lacking these it loses shape, its purpose, its direction. The policy of retirement in favor o’ mere youth, is indeed a fatal one. As well might a racehorse relinquish its function tip a heavy animal of -fewer years. The active brain is not active because it is young; it does not cease to be active when it grows old. Its enemies are not the' years, but the poisons which are carried to it in blood imperfectly cleansed. The cure, in fact, for that “younger man feeling” is not retirement, but exercise, diet, rest. If these are attended to the brain which has made its >vay pan be trusted to uphold what it has built till a very late age.