RULES FOR LONGEVITY.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3149, 25 December 1922, Page 8

RULES FOR LONGEVITY.

(London Daily Telegraph.) A Chicago doctor has bequeathed 1 to the world a new goldten rule. Having assisted to bring 3,000 young citizens of Chicago into the world, he felt a desire to keep them in it as long as possible. So, at the respectable age of 80, he propounded to his Sunday school class a code' of conduct in twelve clauses. This new rule is recommended by tbe fact that the doctor, who himself obeyed it carefully, did live ten. years after the lime at which he made it public, and thus produced some evidence to support his promise that it will “enable a man to reach; the age of 90.” The physician had healed himself. He also claimed that the disciples of his teaching would “lay the surest foundation for life of the spirit hero and hereafter.” Not only longevity, but immortality he had to offer. We shallhowever, be excused if we consider only In's advice for this world. ft steenis that, according to our physician, anyone of us, by taking thought, can become a nonagenarian, and no very stern regimen is required. His code is. in fact, an expansion into twelve clauses of what the- Greeks put into two words when they made “Avoid excess” one of the maxims of life. Do not eat toe much, Dr Nonnan Foster exhorted his Sunday school ; do not drink too much, do not work too much, do not play too much. Hut, as Captain Bunsby profoundly remarked, the hearings of such observations as these lie in the application thereof. Few of ue think that we are intemperate. The natural man is not apt to doubt that he does, in fact, observe the golden mean. His simple faith is that he knows what is good for him, though his friends privately bold that his notion of moderation is preposterous. It is, of course, inevitable that a general prescription should he rather weak and vague in content, and we cannot feel that Dr Norman Foster has brought much light to our individual darkness with the' exhortation to ‘shun all trespassers against the plain physiology of your existence.” We must still! rely on our own taste and fancy to point out to us the royal road to longevity. But we do not* blame the physician. It is related of old Parr that he could give no particular reason for having attained the age of a hundred and fifty. His pleasant habit was to observe no rules for eating hut “to discuss any kind of eatable that came to hand.” When King Charles I. put the matter to him bluntly, “You have lived longer than other men; what have you done more than other men?” the old gentleman was not edifying. He replied, with a. sad. had boast, that at something over a hundred he had misbehaved himself and been constrained to do public penance. It is to b© feared that we can find no model of conduct in old Parr, who was plainly 7, even at a hundred and fifty 7, a. worldling of the worldlings, who declared' to the curious that his religion was whatever the religion of the King of the time might happen to he. We should, perhaps, assign him to that sect discovered of celebrated' by Mr Chesterton, the Methuselahites, whose religion consists; in the simple aspiration to live as long as possible. Our other modern Methusaleh, Henry Jenkins, who lived, according to his monument, to the age of 169. has left even less evidence of his methods. We can only infer that prosperity is not necessary to longevity, for Jenkins had never been anything more than a butler, became a laborer, and spent many 7 years as a beggar. But the veracity or the memory of these old gentlemen, who were themselves the only testimony to their age, has been denied. Victorian scepticism went so far ae to doubt whether any authenticated case of a centenarian could be found. This is. of course, an extravagance of incredulity 7. but we may well regard with suspicion the claims to great age which date from a time when records were imperfectly kept. Even the lady whose life of 158 years is apparently accepted by French authorities, upon the evidence that she sold her estate for an annuity at the age of 66, and, to the horror of the buyers and their heirs, drew that annuity for ninety-two years, seems suspect. The registers of 1680, when she was bom. are not precisely exhaustive, and it is not wholly outside human experience that there should lie a little error about the age of ait annuitant. Our own generation is not so much interested in isolated cases of extreme longevity a.s in the prolongation' of health and vigor. Pew of us, perhaps, have, any desire to play that last scene of ail. which Is second childishness and mere oblivion. Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. The lesson of Tithouus has been preached to mankindl for three thousand year. Why should a man desire in any way to vary from the kindly race of men Or pass hevond the goal of ordinance Wh ere all should' pause, as is most meet for all? I> ll l the answer of our century would he to question what is the goal of ordinance. what is the natural term of man’s life. The Pacully of Medicine in Paris has just been listening—we do not know with what feelings to Dr Vorunoll’s exposition of how lie can make the old young by grafting upon them the glands of animals, fie docs not claim that he can give Ill’s patients longer life. What his surgery promises is that the years of old age will he as healthy and vigorous as youth. Time will try In’s method, which is not the first and probably will not he the last designed to avert senile degeneracy. There is little doubt that in the few thousand years of which we have recorded history, a. small fraction of the time during which the human race lias been upon the earth, the duration of life lias increased. There is no reason to suppose that we know yet to what term the average of vigorous life may he prolonged. It may well he that a general improvement in the conditions to which we are subject will give future generations a, far longer period of active service on earth. It is not impossible that science may 7 discover, as Metcliiiikoff thought he had discovered, the means of preventing senile degeneration!. But the new Tithoiuis would not thereby he endowed with im,mortality upon earth; lie would only he preserved from the infirmities of age until such time as the human body had achieved all of which it is capable. Then, its task done, its natural force exhausted, the instinct for life, some have argued, would pass, and the body would sink into death with that calm relief which it finds in sleep. Then willi no throbs of fiery pain. No cold gradations of decay. Death broke at once the vital chain And freed his soul the nearest way.