AGE, I DO ABHOR THEE

Evening Star, Issue 17324, 12 April 1920, Page 7

AGE, IDO ABHOR THEE

lhl t?i n« S afc ev6l ? one would ca ™ t° £ « age ° f Mefc buselah, unless iie vrae sure that a few of his friend= w« fllT™ fr To be Methuselah was all very well m a world k whieh cording to the computation of the learned, men did not arrive at puberty tilfthe a^ old Xn M ? t ? Ußel . a . h waa o!d « a world of old men Adam himself had lived till 930 -Noah who was a middle-aged man of 600 when he built the Ark, went on living .Mil he was 930. But, alas,- levity of Ls kind is rare outside the borderland of Paradise. *l r Charles Sayle compiled a few years ago a birthday book called 'The Ages of .Van, giving a reference to everv age wherever it was possible, up to that of Methuselah, and even beyond it. But, when he came to the greater numbers, he had to take refuge among comic writers and students of the other world. Opposite the age of 700 he could find only certain devils who declared on August 13, 1491, hat they were longer lived than men, and lasted from 700 to 800 years. At the a»e ot W4 no one but Gargantua could be put .orward, who was thus old when he begat Pantagrnel. Who would willingly survive with no contemporaries but devils and characters m fiction? We fear the annals ot this Europe of ours contain no precedent for a life of even 200 years. Old Pari—the old, old, very old man "—did w e l! enough and he achieved onlv a little more than 152 years. Metchnikoff tells of a b rench woman who died in the last century at tne ago oi 158, and who during the last 10 years of her life lived on cheese and goat s milk. But of all the people who lived on cheese and goat's milk, she alone seems to have got into the second half of a second century. Other instances of centenarians quoted by Mr Sayle suggest that, if goats milk is good, it mav be none the worse tor having a little rum added to it, Folatiman, a surgeon,'for instance? who mecl at 140, " was in the habit, from his Atn year upwards, of getting drunk overv night, after having attended to his day." "The Irish land owner Brawn,' we read in another entrv. " whe lived to 120, had an'inscription put upon his tombstone that he was alwavs drunk and when in that condition was so terrible that even Death had been, afraid of him"." \\e doubt, however, if it would be wise for those who hope to live long to follow the example oi Brawn. Post hoc sed non propter hoc is a good proverb. Brandy in Latin and French, and whisky in Irish. is called the " water of life," but as a preventive of death it cannot infallibly be relied on. Many drunka-rds have died before tney reached 80. We heard of one poor wretch who died at 75. The sovereign remedy for old age has vet to be discovered.

Ihere is a good deal of. evidence to show, indeed, t-nat the life of an old man, ! if he is healthy and is of' independent I mean?, may be an exceedingly pleasant one One writer has suggested 'that cheerfulness grows with old age. and that old j people often find their enjoyment of the t beaut:es of Nature increasing" The tragedv ' of old age, where, it exists, is usually a j of ilhhealth. helplessness; and : neglect. The average old man in civi'i=ed ' countries is little better than a pauper: but, even so, how often does one find him more serene, genial, and merry than the young and the middle-aged in 'similar circumstances? Xhere has been a reaction" against old age among modern»writers, and realists present us with pictures of senile decrepitude, grunipiness, and mean- ; ness. But every old man is not like Mi : James Stephen's " Old Snarley-gob." There was a tailor during the war who adver- , tised that he would' not make am- clothes | for old men, and certain pacifists'asked us to believe that oil men were pimply old wretches with bloodshot eyes rejuvenating themselves -with the spectacle of young men going out to be massacred. We are inclined to think that if any man was to be found so corrupt and insane as to get this kind of pleasure from the war he was a middle-aged and not an old one. Later middle age is the age at which men take control of the world and are most jealous . of the young. Old age brings with it a I certain resignation—a resignation even to the new generation that is knocking at the doors. There is a natural link between old people and children. It is only the . ages in between that feel responsible for J the universe. Old age casts dull care awav as age cannot. There is an elemon t of friskiness in a healthy old person, as- in that Rebecca Freeland whose epitaph Mr Sayle quotes r She drank good ale, good punch, good trine/ # And lived to the age of ninety-nine. Who would not live to he a hundred if he could be a Rebecca Freeland? Who would not be an old man. even, like Horace. Walpole, who pulled along his gouty constitution with the aid of iced water till the atie of eighty? One's attitude to the report of the discovery of a new cure for old age will be decided largely by one's feelings as to the desirability of "long life. At the same time the discovery is of such an unpleasant kind that it will leave many people doubtful as regards both the decency and the ' effects of the cure, supposing it to be a j cure. Dr Voronoff announces that he has ; experimented with his cure, not only" on a ! number of animals but on two old men. j Of the latter he says: '' I have restored ! youthful vigor by grafting upon them, cer- | tain glands taken fom an ape." One of j the men—not a very old one,- only 66 ! was, we are told, " a bowed, decrepit, weak I man in senile decay" before the operation, i Since the operation, though his hair re- j mains white and his skin wrinkled, he ' " walks upright, with a %irm step, and brain clear and active, sleeps t well, audi has the appetite of a man in the prime ' of iife." These are certainly desirable j results so far. A good appetite, a clear | brain, a firm step—what more could one I ask, short of a good conscience and im- j mortality? Still, sotnfhow, one recoils. Is \ not. man already enough of an ape without ! havin an ape's glands grafted on him? ; Is it certain that in his new lease of life j ho will not become less and less of a man and more and more of an ape? W« cannot be sure that a piece of monkey thrust into some other part of our system than ihh stomach will not play monkey tricks with us and send us skipping up trees and hanging from the branches with the tails of our evening clothes. It would be a horrible thing to see old men with white beards developing prognathous jaws and flocking into the dancing chujs with the nlulations of the forest. Alas! poor creature! He is always ready to- believe that- somebody has, discovered the cure for old age, though nobody has yet discovered a cure for baldness. We trust, however, that even in these days of the popularity of offals, he will have no traffic with the gland? of .- apes. Better teetotalism, sour milk, deep : bueathing, and the diet of Nebuchadnezzar ! than tha*. Imagine a Parliament crowded \ with surgeons' apes produced by this new i operation Why, they would govern the ; world no better than it' is being governed r now.—' New Statesman.' I