ELIXIR OF YOUTH

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 January 1928, Page 2

ELIXIR OF YOUTH

WHEN NO ONE NEED GROW OLD. The attainment of 100 years as the normal span of life was foreshadowed by Dr. S. Henning Belfrage in a lecture to the new Health Society (writes Sir Phillip Gibbs in the “Sunday Chronicle,” (London). Do we want to live longer? What will happen to the world of the future if men and women double the present span of years? We have to face it, whatever our doubts. There are people walking about now —quite elderly of seventy ox* more — who claim to have been rejuvenated so that theix* vitality has returned and their sense of sight and hearing have been restored, and theix* memory has come back. More wonderful still perhaps—they claim to have regained a joyousness ixx life such as belongs to youth. It is uncertain yet whether they will live to axx advanced age, fox* the experiments upoxx them are still fresh. One has still the right to be a little sceptical evexx when Dr. Voronoff asserts confidently, as he did recently, that there is no reason why the average healthy inaxx ox* wonxaxx should not live fox* 140 years or so. It was the Russiaxx biologist Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute ixx Paris, who was the first of the moderxx scientists to study the causes of death and the possibility of postponing it. His inquiries led him to believe that senility and decay are partly caused by internal putrefaction. He advised simple food, therefore, and sanitary methods. Metchnikoff was not unaware of the influence of internal secretions from the glands upon the vitality and proper functioning of the humaxx body, but it is only within more recent years that biologists and physiologists and chemists have concentrated upoxx those factors, with results which have led them to startling—and dangerous experiments with life. The thyroid gland, situated in the neck, has extraordinary influence upon the humaxx body and brain. When it becomes atrophied, or if it is artificially removed, many of the characteristics of old age are produced. When there is too much thyroid patients, instead of being dull and apathetic, become restless, anxious and highly nervous. In 1919 Professor* Loeb discovered by experiment that thyroid feeding speeds up the metamorphose of frogs. By feeding very young tadpoles with this substance frogs no larger than a fly can be produced. If a young tadpole is deprived of its thyroid gland, it is unable ever* to become a frog, though it continues its tadpole life.

Another gland about the size of a pea, and lying at the base of the skull has even more amazing influence upon oux* human nature.

It is called the pituitary gland, and has been»studied profoundly by Professor Cushing, of Harvard, and othex* biologists, who have discovered that over-development or some impropex* functioning of this agent leads to the enlargement of the head, hands and feet, and is probably the cause of abnormal people, commonly called giants. Other glands, called the suprarenal ox* adrenal, because they are situated above the kidneys, influence the character as well as tixe body of a human being. Some of the harmones or chemical messengers in the secretions these glands produce have been chemically analysed and found to be fairly simple. lodine, fox* instance is the main element ixx the composition of the thyroid gland. These secretions caxx be reproduced in the chemists’s shop. Friends of mine are taking doses of them.

It opens up a vista alarming to the ordinary man and woman, but exciting to the experimental scientists, who hope to exert control upon physical and mental development by playing about with human glands a's a pianist plays about with notes. A little more thyroid or a little less, an extra discharge from the thymus, or a slight decrease or increase in the- chemical action of the pituitary, a few spare parts from monkeys or goats to replace .one of the sex glands, or a chemical composition which will restore their activity, and there you get your-fingers on the instrument fo life. , It will change old men into young, make giants of dwarfs, extend the imagination of poets and painters, speed up the activity of manual workers, change criminals, calm our passions or intensify them, make special kinds of men and women for special jobs and callings. The idea sounds ridiculous. It cannot happen, we say, thrusting the thing away from us as a fantastic and rather frightful dream. And yet it is happening, as regards the postponement of death, or at least the rejuvenation of senile animals, including ourselves. z By grafting fresh glands affecting the reproductive organs into old goats and sheep, Dr. Voronoff has restored them to the vigour of youth. What has happened to sheep and goats, rats and guinea-pigs, has been tried upon men and women by Serge Voronoff, who has carried out, he says, many hundreds of grafting operations.

All the evidence agrees, he says, that the grafting of a young gland fortifies the body, improves the memory, stimulates the mind, combats arterial sclerosis, and imparts fresh energy to all the organs. The majority of those who have undergone the operation are brain workers, such as university professors, doctors, men of letters, and engineers, and their word canont be doubted. Then there is Dr. Steinach, Director of the Biological Institute, Vienna. His method is different from that of Voronoff. He does not graft in a new gland, but ties off one of the reproductive agents separating the two interstitial glands. The results claimed by Steinach are startling. “The appearance of the patients,” he says, “becomes youngish and fresh. Their bodily strength increases. the tremor of their hands disappears, memory and will power return.”

Well,now, what are we to '’make of all that? Is it a gigantic hoax that is being put upon the world? The evidence as far as I have been able to gather it, does not point that way. One eminent medical man with whom 1 discussed the subject told me that in the near future it will not only be possible to restore vigour to old age and prolong the life of elderly folk, but what, in his opinion, is more important and wonderful, it may be possible to lengthen the period of youth so that a lively girl of twenty will be able to retain all her charm and beauty for forty or fifty years.