HOW TO LIVE TEN YEARS LONGER

Evening Star, Issue 19518, 28 March 1927, Page 13

HOW TO LIVE TEN YEARS LONGER

Ten years may bo added to the average span of human life by personal care, if one begins young enough, Dr Charles H. Mayo, of the Mayo Clinic, stated to the American College of Burgeons at Washington recently. Says a correspondent of the New York ‘ Times’; New diseases would also develop to destroy mankind unless safeguarded against, he said, and man’s struggle to-day was no longer one for mere existence, but for the luxuries of life. Man, he asserted, often committed crimes to obtain such luxuries. Dr Mayo said that man’s age lengthened an average of twenty years from the sixteenth century until 1850, when the average age was forty. It had advanced live years more, to fortyfive, by 1875 The average age had now advanced to fifty-eight. Dr Mayo said, however, that the world was getting better through greater care and more knowledge of how to take care of one’s self. “The dangerous age of woman,” lie said, “is from sixteen to eighteen. But the dangerous ago for man is from fifty to fifty-five—if you can’t keep your eye on them, lock them up.” Many fat men, lie declared, die off because of lack of girth control. (Hand transfusion Dr Mayo referred to as “ bunk.” Two-thirds of those who are old have acquired age through great cell vitality from their parents. Therefore it would be wise for children to select their parents. Many of those who have shortlived parents may lengthen their own lives. Those who have long-lived parents may shorten their lives through lack of proper care. It takes ages to make a man—not a generation of good clothes and education. Dr Mayo said children in cities had better advantages than those in the country in many respects, one being that they were freer from bovine tuberculosis than those on farms. Country children had some benefits because of good air, but_ this was offset in the city by athletic training, proper hygienic care, and other modern advantages. “No wonder the farmer wants to come to town,” lie said, “ where his children can be educated at public expense.” Dr Franklin H. Martin, of Chicago, Director-general of the American College of Surgeons, said _ one itj eight people died of heart disease, one in seven of cancer, and one in six of apoplexy. “Every one of these,” he declared, “ is preventable, and a curable disease, if reached early enough. If wo had a General Gorgas, or someone of that type, who would say to must have annual examinations, 60 per cent, ol those diseases would be caught in their incipient stages. General Gorgas succeeded because he had autocratic power to do what he wanted to do m bis fight against yellow fever.”