RENEWING OUR YEARS

Evening Star, Issue 17319, 6 April 1920, Page 5

RENEWING OUR YEARS

THE PROLONGATION OF YOUTH. “ What is the commonest of all diseases?” writes the medical correspondent of' London ‘Observer’ (who should.be Dr Saleeby, if sty-IS and phrase count for anything). “ Tuberculosis, malaria, and other infections might be named, but the answer to which elsewhere I hayo committed myself is premature senility, of which the reader had probably not thought.” PREMATURE AGEING. Tills premature ‘‘agoing ” has, of course, nothing to do with age or the passage of time as such. Time affects nothing; perhaps time is nothing. What matter are events and* processes. By far flic commonest of those processes which prematurely age us arc two —alcoholism and over-eating. The British and American evidence is now immense and overwhelming, clear" and conclusive, which shows that even moderate drinking, shortens life by several years. As for overeating, which also involves clfronic intoxication and deterioration of tissue, its importance is immense, and will doubtless he very exactly and in detail appraised in the United States when the complicating alcoholic factor can ho excluded, as. in effect, henceforth. The inverse r’elation between girth of body and length of life has indeed been already thoroughly demonstrated by insurance actuaries on both sides of the Atlantic: and the obscene outline of “John Bull,” Henry VIII., and Father Christmas, our three typical figures, as Sir Victor Horsley used- to observe, involves a definitely measurable reduction of vital expectation. It is now becoming the habit of Americans, over 40 in especial, to consult the physicians of the Life Extension Institute in icsncct of their weight, their possible tendency to rising blood -pressure. on. FOR YOUTH AND ADOLESCENCE. But all that, surely, we all know. Nor need I discuss the various and effective measures, such a-s the avoidance of cold and worry, whereby too lives of the elderly, may be prolonged, or those which may indefinitely avert a second attack of cerebral hemorrhage when a first, less than fatal, has given the warning. The research which 1 desire deals with deeper things than • those, and is more worth while. The prolongation of age is all very well, but I am for the prolongation of youth. Even in the womb wc move slowly towards the tomb. We must grow up and grow old; we have suite-natal life, infancy, childhood, adolescence, maturity, senility. But the fact we ail know is thatthe relative dmatiou of certain of these is highly variable. Not merely arc there extraordinary cases of longevity, nor the bizarre cases of progeria recently observed fiy Dr Hastings Gilford, of Reading, where the skeleton is under-developed, the subject .shows infantilism, and may die in ins teens with every symptom of '‘old age ” —but there arc wide variations within what we cau the normal. The lower races of mankind reach senility sooner. Lower types of our own high, race, types often found in very high places, begin to be senile directly they cease to be puerile. There are differences inA,pendent of habit. They are often very markedly hereditary. What are the factors which dc-termins them? It would bo worth while to know. If we could agree upon the most desirable period of life and extend it, how trifling most other conceivable achievements would be I That period is surciv youth or adolescence. GLANDS AND VITAMINES. Of course, tae-*e things have causes. Progeria, for instance, that dreadful acceleration of the normal life cycle, teems to be the opposite in many ’particulars of the disease called acromegaly, which is characterised by gigantism, and an overdeveloped skeleton, and wnich is known to be due to morbid action of a ductless gland called the pituitary, at the base of the brain. Here is a clue, and wc must follow it. Observe, further, that the action of the “ vitamiues" necessary foty normal growth and development is probably upon the ductless glands, trie internal secretions of which are of leading importance in the development of the body. Here, indeed, is a. cine. Already we have been able to_ arrest the normal development of experimental animals by withholding cei lain foods containing vitamines, so that an early stage in their history may be prolonged for some weeks --a long time relatively to the normal life-span of each animals. As I have said elsewhere : "It is almost, as if a minute and otherwise imperceptible modification of the diet of a girl of 20 should cause her to be '2o' for another 20 years, and thereafter, (on the resumption of an ordinary diet) to develop in the •jr.iiuarv .way as if she were '2o’ still. The lack of an infinitesimal something in her diet would have presented her with 20 extra years of ever-burgeoning youth AN INCOMPARABLE PRIZE. Life, bio-chomicai.lv regarded, is "a senes of fermentations.” (Observe the (qualification. There is a higher plane. Love lias been defined ns -‘le contact des deux muqueuses,” but also as “tu bo all mane of Inith and service. ’ I am here on the lower plane, as real, hut only the lower.) V. c are beginning lo learn .something of the ferments or "enzymes" that •control the fermentations of life. The ductless glands make gome of them. . The vitainines arc really the ferments 0 f nutrition and, since they arc not really amines at, ail, but wore so named by an error, we might call them trophozymes, I think, to indicate their real nature and funccions. (See ‘The Lancet,’ January 3, pp. 64 et s.eq.) We are really just beginning to see how life may be extended in a sense worth working for—not merely by the avoidance of the things which shorten ifcy not merely by extra care of persons with one foot in the grave; not merely by the control of disease infections, but by the control of those internal processes the sequence of which determines‘our lifecycle. from the growth of the embryo to the seventh age of man. Here Is a theme for research, expensive, difficult, exceedingly protracted, but- offering what an incomparable, prize for our children’s children 1