MAN’S SPAN OF LIFE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 12 January 1926, Page 1

MAN’S SPAN OF LIFE

NATURE'S INTENDED LIMIT AN AVERAGE OF 4". YEARS OUR PRESENT MODE OF LIVING “Wiion we have replace-! our ignorance by real knowledge, we shall then be in a position not to adopt, our bodily structure to our mode of living, but our mode of living to our oodily structure. This seems the best way out of the great experiment on which civilisation has launched man." Such was tin* conclusion reached by Sir Arthur Keith in a lecture delivered before the Royal Society of Medicine. The rate of mail's (-volition. Sir Arthur Keith argued, was far more rapid than lujd hitherto been supposed, and it was certain that agriculture had not been practised more than 1)000 years ago in Western Europe. City life was a new experiment for Europeans, and most of those living in London, if they could go liaolc 20 generations, would find an ancestry which was living on the soil and of the soil. Tin* poorest, however, to-day could ad l to his dietary products brought from the ends of the earth. The alimentary tract had now to accommodate itself to a modern dietary, and undoubtedly civilisation was exposing the body to a vast and critical experiment, it said much for the body of the primeval hunter that it had been able to adapt itself to stand the new stresses as well as it did. The hunting people would never have shown statistics like those of the recruits examined, when out of 10,001) no less than 303 were found to have hernia and 113 flat feet. In one respect modern civilisation had reduced the demands made on the body. Heat conditions were much better regulated than before, and man lived now much in the conditions of a. hothouse plant. “USELESS” APPENDIX Referring to the appendix, the lecturer said that, despite Darwin, it was not a useless organ. He had dissected liulf-u dozen Gibbon monkeys, and in two of them bad found an appendix holding a row of fruit stones showing that the appendix shared in t h 0 digestive work of the caecum. There was no to show that the anthropoid suffered from appendicitis in its natural habitat, but they becam e subject to the disease when kept in confinement. Of 61 chimpanzees dying in captivity, 10 suffered from appendicitis. The eppendix could be compared with the tonsils and certain other organs which were merely unable to withstand the conditions to which they were exposed. Archdeacon Paley bad been right when lie said that our list of useless structures decreased as our knowledge increased. IXscusn'ng the defects of the eye in modern man, Sir Arthur Keith refused to believfc that under hunting conditions every man was like civilised man in suffering from short- sight. By the age of 45, he said, most people needed spectacles. Metclmikoff had placed the natural age of man at 100 years, but he believed that, Nature had worked on the basis that the mean life tenur e of 45 years should be the limit and had decided to run the human army on the short service system . It- was a, mootpoint, whether it would be an advantage to civilisation that all should live to he centenarians. NO TURNING RACK Metclmikoff was right, concluded Sir Arthur, when he declared that civilisation had launched man on a great experiment. From that experiment there was no turning back. We could not return to conditions that prevailed 6000 years ago. There were more people in one of th 0 meaner streets of London than could find an existence in the whole length and breadth of ' the Thames Valley if they returned to the manner of living of our distant ancestors. “Seeing how differently we are circumstanced.” he added, “in every situation of life, the wonder is not. that structural imperfections and functional disharmonies should develop, in a proportion ot our numbers, hut that so mnriv i f us should oscaoe harm altogether and enjoy good lioafßi. It says much for the adaptations! reaction inherent in tin* human body that it withstands the artificial conditions of modern civilisation as well as it does."