CAN WE DEFY OLD AGE?

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17862, 7 September 1923, Page 11

CAN WE DEFY OLD AGE?

The fight against old age 'Wfis -waged by the scientist long before science itself parted. co-mpany from magic(writes "A Scientist" in the London "Daily Mail"). To-day we term "physiological death" that which, comes as a result of the exhaustion of the tissues, in contrast to that devolution which follows disease. Voronoff and! his fellow-workers have declared war on this physiological death, and are perfecting technique which will, they consider, in any event postpone the evil day. It has been suspected for some time that the body cells were capable of living for ever, and recent research work ha.s demonstrated that these oells do not die, but axe killed by not having the proper food supplied to them. Side by side with these researches, investigations have been going on into the functions of certain glands of the body. These glands form substances which .ire termed "internal secretions,'' because they -are not poured out by a duct into some organ of the body, but are passed into the blood in its passage through the gland. Many workers have shown that these secretions have a marked; influence upon health, and it is probable that they have a direct influence upon the nutrition of the body cells. It is more than thirty years am that Brown-Sequard first tried the effect of a dried extract of the yeiy gland with which Voronoff is working. Voronoff's advance is to transplant one of these organs from a chimpanzee to a man. The question which arises is: "Are the scientific probabilities with the success or failure of Voronoff's method?" The answer to this must be: <r \Vith its failure." Although there will be temporary improvement in the patient's condition, due to the accumulated internal secretion in the gland transplanted, the gland will not live, and in consequence will produce no further supply of the important secretion in its new home. The results of transplanting animal tissues into the human body have aU ways been disappointing. Great hops was extended, for example, to the replacement of the damaged cornea of an eve with a- portion of • similar tissue removed from a rabbit's eye, but this work has now been admitted to have ended in failure. The human body treats these imported portions of animal tissue in the same way as it deals with other foreign bodies; it mav throw a protective covering of efementaiy tissue over them, but it declines to admit j them into its working. J