THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 22 November 1924, Page 13

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE.

PEOPLE WHO PEACH THE CENTUPY. , The death of a Canterbury centenarian on Monday reminds us (says the Press) how few survive long enough m any country to arouse doubts of their actual years. The list of those who are Known to have lived to be a hundred years old is so small that the addition of a new name, 1 rom whatever country, is always a matter of interest. The most famous of all centenarians, excluding biblical characters, is “Ola Parr,’’ who was born in Shropshire in 1487, and lived to such an age that when he died there were villagers whose grandparents had known him only as an old man. Parr married twice, at 80 and at 122, and according to the records was still so hearty at 130 that, he was able to go out into the fields and thresh wheat. Modern prophets will not be surprised to hear that when his end came at the age of 148 it was due to a change to an unsuitable diet. Parr had been seized upon by the Ea.l of Arundel as a “remarkable piece of antiquity/’ and the sudden change to high living in London. accomplished in a short time what all the years hud failed to do. r

Parr’s record was considered so remarkable that a resting-place was found for his remains in Westminster Abbey and until recently his “score” remained. unchallenged. Now, however, there has been discovered a Chinese centenarian, Yuan Kwo-Chang, who claims to be 163; and the claim has made a sufficient impression on the Manchurian war lord, Chang-Tso-Lin, to earn a sP e ~ cial pension. But whether/there really lives.it Chinaman who is 163, it is probable that there are to be found in every country in the world to-day a few men, and some women, who have celebrated their centenary—men and women whose memories go back almost to Napoleon, and who have seen a .new world arise, with its trains and steamers, and wireless and aeroplanes and moving pictures. And we naturally ask, if a hundred and sixty, why not two- hundred and sixty ? And that brings us up against the mystery of death.

This mystery scientists are now attacking. Already they have got as f<r P rolon S life of the fruit fly 900 per cent., and to keep alive for a decade tissue cells which are taken from the heart of a chicken embryo and placed in a suitable nutrient medium. And it does not de-tract from the importance of these earlv expor’ments that the methods enmloved could never be applied to human life. The fact remains, as one savant puts it, that “the non-fixity” of the life cyo’e has been demonstrated, and there are many conceivable modifications tint could affect the human life cycle.” If it is agreed that most of us are more concerned with the retention of all our physical and_ment.il faculties than the extensions of our life cycle—that we would sooner, die in harness at sixty than linircr on as onlookers to a hub. dred and sixty—the reply is that the bn-'-o.s which send us from football howls-are the forces behind the mvsterv of death, and that science does not wholly surrender to them. AVlum specialists are tondin.rr fruit flics they arc fighting*for both the proloeo-ation ,u>d the rejuvenation of human life: and it would ho as reckless to sav that- the stvnegle availeth naught it. would 1-e foolish to hc'dn laying plans for our second centm-v.