MAN'S AGE LIMIT.

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 149, 21 December 1936, Page 21

MAN'S AGE LIMIT.

HELD TO BE 106

OTHER CLAIMS UNPROVED

ig Man is probably the longest-lived of rs all mammals despite legends about the re longevity of elephants and whales; but ar among the millions of humans now on sir earth, rarely—almost never—does one a get beyond the age of 106 years, say y, the "New York Time::." Insurance actuaries, howev-.-r. have ;d their patience worn tmn tnroughout ;e each year refuting the claims, in print,' *y of men or women who insist they have is, lived 106 or more years. They had to n- do it again a few days ago. le This time it was a story from Albu:y querque, New Mexico, where Mrs. at Anastacia Camargo was reported to :d be 118 years old, but still "sharp-eyed, ie sharp-witted, and erect"; still threading >n needles, still doing her own washing lg —even chopping wood. Stories of that nature come into the newspapers at the rate of five or six a month, usually from remote corners Df of the world. Most of the time they in come from countries where the regisas tration of births is not, and never has lf| been, considered important. 3f A GLANCE AT THE RECORD. in Samples: t- "Georgetown, British Guiana, Oct. 4. a Pundit Mahangoo yesterday celebrat:h ed his 106 th birthday by getting marse ried for a third time." ie "Gets Federal Pay at 115." The story 4 of a negro, a former slave in Chickast mauga' National Park. Married five A. times. is "Adirondack guide says he's 111." >r That came from Blue Mountain Lake, s, New York. te "Simla, India.—ln the Colaba district of Bombay lives a man named 'c Kashinath who is 120 years old. His n present wife is his fourth." c "San Salvador, July 12.—Miss > Dolores Bedoya celebrated her 120 th is birthday recently. Attributes it to a the fact that she has never been in d love." '1 "Sheboygan, Wisconsin, July 4.—Will 11 Stanton celebrated what he said was ir his 112 th birthday today. He prides c himself on still being able to work c like a man of 50." ° The actuaries used to sigh when '' they read them, but no more. They have established, to their own satisfaction at least,«that a bit of digging in n old census records.will disclose in ale most every case that' thirty to forty ~ years were added to a subject's age j between census recordings. Not more than thirty persons out I of every 1,000,000, they find, reach the age of 100.' They have insurance re- ~ cords and other public documents going . back 100 years and more to prove it. - CONFUSION OF NAMES. ' In several cases, notably that of ' Katherine, Countess of Desmond, the * mistake could be traced to the fact 5 that a mother and her child had the same name; that the j mother's birth ,' was recorded, but not her death, and 1 the mother's years were added to the child's. 1 In several instances children's \ births were officially recorded, with " baptism papers for added verification. When they died, at say fifteen, the " name of the dead child was given to the new baby and- along with it the ' dead baby's years. ; Another reason for persons reach- \ ing incredible age, it is stated, is ' the practice in many countries and . in some parts of the United States of giving birth certificates to old folk ■ merely on their presentation of affl- ' davits. They could put in any age \ they wished. Several authentic works have been written on the subject: "The Biology of Death" and "The Ancestry of the Long-Lived," by Dr.. Raymond Pearl . of Johns Hopkins University; "Length of Life," by Dr. Louis I. Dublin and ; j Alfred J. Lotka, of the Metropolitan ■ Life Insurance Company; a paper by ■ Dr. Arthur Hunter, chief actuary of the New York Life Insurance Company; . Of the many millions who have held life insurance policies or annuities in the last 150 years there is not a single instance, the actuaries will tell you, of one who lived beyond 106 years. Many did reach various ages between 100 and 106. TWO ILLUSTRIOUS CASES. The two most famous longevity cases in history (if you omit Methuselah, with his 969 years, which were probably added with a much shorter calendar than ours) are those of Thomas Parr, known as "Old Parr," and the remarkable Dane, Chester Jacobsen Drakenberg. Old Parr gets consideration because most of the people of his time believed he actually was 152 years old when he died in 1635, and because King Charles I, who had him taken up to London from his native Shropshire, gave him a place in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. The actuaries, however, will point out that there is no documentary proof that Old Parr was born in 1483, as he claimed. They had only his word for it. • "" . Chris Drakenberg is supposed to have lived from November 18, 1626, to October 9, 1772, but there is no birth record in that case either. He was 111 when he married Maren Larsen in Count Fr. Danneskjold-Samsoe's castle in Denmark in 1737, but only by his own count. She was only 60, a sea captain's widow. Chris, like most of the centenarians (real or fraudulent), held the fires of youth a long time burning. At the age of 130 he complained that the ladies in Aarhus would not listen to his proposals. He gave up at 146, according to legend, and died. The experts who write on longevity insist., that there is an extreme limit to human life and that there always will be. Incidentally, they all seem to agree that men do not Jive shorter Jives today than their remote ancestors did.