HOW TO LIVE LONGER.

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6601, 19 May 1925, Page 3

HOW TO LIVE LONGER.

THE VALUE OF RESEARCH If a penny a head can add 20 years to life,, what will sixpence do? This riddle was propounded by the great scientist, Sir Ronald Ross, whose researches into the cause of malaria and sleeping sickness have resulted in the virtual conquest of those dread tropic diseases. He says that he thinks that the old idea of a life span of three score years and ten is quite wrong. We live curtailed lives, he says, because we are the prey to countless germs. Conquer the germs of disease and man may attain an average life of 150 years —perhaps longer!

“Eighty years ago,” said Sir Ronald, “the average life of a London man was 34 years 7 months; of a London woman, 38. years 4 months. To-day it is 53 years 9 months -and 59 years respectively. Medical science, in 80 years, has given , v us 20 more years of life.” He believes that this big stride toward longer life is but the start. The amount now spent on research is equivalent to Id per head of the population. “What could we achieve if we spent sixpence per head?'” he asks.

A great scientist of the Pasteur Institute in Paris has predicted that in 100 years from now a man should live to bj 150 years old. Mechnikoff, the Russian scientist, made the same prophecy. He tried to exterminate the germs of the intestines by a diet of sour milk. These startling visions of a future race of Methuselahs are to materialise through the agency of the research laboratory, in Sir Ronald Ross’ opinion. Instead of fighting epidemic diseases when they break out, the laboratory worker will tackle them at their sources. He will remove the cause instead of combating the effects. Already research laboratories are at work on these great problems. The Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Lister Institute in London, the Rockefeller Foundation in America, and the recently opened Ross Institute at Putney, all have similar aims—to find the causes of diseases.

Scientists state that they forsee the time when there will be research laboratories in every city, financed by the State and municipalities. In them patient scientific workers will seek those Unseen enemies of the human family until the last germ is eradicated from the world, and man will cease to be the prey of a swarming world of baleful parasites. If the dream of a race of Methusalahs seems fantastic, so, no doubt, t would seem our present long lease of life to a man of the mediaeval period, when plavues decimated the population of Europe and the average span of life was about 28 years. The next immediate step towards long life, says Sir Ronald Ross, is the conquest of such scourges as cancer, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, and smallpox, diseases which still baffle medical science. To-day we spend £IBO,OOO a year on research; what would be achieved if we should spend £10,000,000.