The Opunake Times TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23rd 1923. BEYOND THE ALLOTTED SPAN.

Opunake Times, Volume LVV, Issue 3675, 23 October 1923, Page 2

The Opunake Times

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23rd 1923. BEYOND THE ALLOTTED SPAN.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Can the life of a man be prolonged beyond the allotted span ? A scientific journal makes answer : It is a fact that there is no reason known to science why a man should die of old age. It is a proven fact that, in the laboratory, the life of a man's tissues and organs, can be made eternal. There are to-day in England, America, France, and Italy fragments of human tissue which have been kept alive for years, and which will live for ever. In the Rockfellow Institute in New York there are fragments of tissue which have been taken from a dead man and restored to immortal life. The human body is composed ot cells. When the cells die finally the body dies. The cells are continually dying, but until the end comes they replace themselves. It is an aphorism that the human body renews itself entirely every seven years. After the passage of seventy years the cell loses its vitality, ceases to replace itself and old age attacks the man. There is no definitely known reason why the cell should lose its vitality. Pasteur, making his famous experiments in fermentation found that the microbe which causes the souring of milk regularly produces a poison which destroys the microbe itself. It is thought that similarly the body cell in functioning must be gradually manufacturing a poison which in the end destroys the cell. Neither the nature of this poison nor the manner of its generation is known. On the basis of this theory, however, the cell is kept perpetually alive in the laboratory. It is taken , when marked with death flaccid, degenerate, weak, like an old man—washed in a laboratory solution, given plasma mixed with a liquid technically known as “embryonic juice", and instantly it begins the life cycle afresh. This operation con be conlinued indefinitely as soon as old age comes on, youth can be restored. Metchnikoff, the great Russian zoologist, and discoverer of Russian culture, believes that the drinking of sour milk will to some extent neutralise the effects of the unknown poison and prolong life. Other scientists favor the surgical operation, which is thought to have direct effect on the cell itself, stimulating it to new activity. When by some process, or potion, what is done to the individual cell in the laboratory can be done to the aggregate of cells which compose a living man, death will be vanquished. Man will live for ever, continually renewing his youth,