Span of Human Life.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17976, 22 March 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

Span of Human Life.

R ©PORTS that the span of human life has been lengthened of late years are unfounded, according to Dr- Louis F- Dublin, statistician of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York. In an address before Die American Public Health Association Dr. Dublin asserted that, in the face of Extraordinary Improvements in public health practice and in the held of medicine within the last century, nothing has happened to encourage the hope that the span of life might be lengthened, reports an American journal. He said. “ There has been some confusion In the past in the use of the expression ‘span of life ’ It is not always el-early understood that there can be marked improvement in the expectation of life or the mean 'length of life, in spite of the fact than the span of life has, so far as we know, changed little or not at all since remote antiquity. The matter is really very simptc. People do not live to more extreme old age than they used to; but a greater proportion of them live to relatively advanced ages, thus pulling up the average. In particular, very many more now pass through the dangers of infant mortality than was the case even so recently as the beginning of the present century.* Thus the mean length of life is much greater than formerly, though the upper limit of life—a few years past, the century mark —is Just as Inexorable to-day as it was a hundred or a thousand years'ago. And the number of persons who reach the venerable age of one hundred years is certainly very small. There are about, 5000 persons in America who claim this distinction, hut it is probable that in many cases their claim is based on an error, and, possibly, here and there, on a pardonable pride that induces them to indulge in a little poetic licence. “ That twenty years have been added to

Has It Been Lengthened?

the average length of human life since public health work began to be actively practised in the early ‘eighties of the last century is true. Rut this gain can be traced t,o the reduced mortality of infants and to the cutting down of the unnecessary and preventable deaths of young people from typhoid fever, diphtheria, scarlet—fever, smallpox, and a number of o\her diseases which, for the most, part affect persons under fortyyears of age. The Situation Is Very Different in the case of certain diseases typical of that period when the. wear and tear of life begin to tell. Prominent, among these are heart-disease and cancer. It is unfortunately a fact that especially since about- 1921, the' death-rates from these diseases have been definitely on the increase (especially among males) past mid-life. “ Another' disease—less important- numerically—which has shown the same, upward trend for persons past mid-life. Is diabetes. In this case, among white males, there is a definite contrast between th« younger and the older age groups for. between the ages of thirty-five and forty-four, the trend has been distinctly downward. The upward trend for diabetes is curiously accentuated among coloured females. “ That there has also been an upward trend in the death-rate from accidents, and also from suicide, in the Upper Registers of LHo will surprise no one who has followed the current course of events. The cause of this upward movement, is, however, essentially external as compared with the mainly internal character of the causes underlying the rise in mortality from degenerative diseases. Incidentally, it is to be noted that not all- degenerative diseases show observable increase in mortality. Cerebral haemorrhage and chronic nephritis show a decrease rather than an increase, at any rate among white persons-"