SOUR MILK AND LONGEVITY.

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13454, 27 June 1912, Page 7

SOUR MILK AND LONGEVITY.

A cablegram of recent date stated that Professor Elie Metchnikoff, of the Pasteur Institute, in lecturing before the Academy of Sciences, claimed that he had discovered a long-life microbe, which produced sugar-reducing intestinal poisons.. Experiments had been made on animals with excellent results.

. The onset of old age and the methods for its prevention have occupied the study of many able men; but of all of them the one whoso name- will probably be most prominently associated with the subject is Elie Metchnikoff, the eminent Russian scientist, lie asserts that most of our ills is due to our being injured and eventually poisoned by bacteria. The bacteria live on our useless products, cause fermentations^ and the production of poisons, and we are slowly, but surely poisoned. The manifestation of this poison is a failure of all our faculties, and the onset, often premature, of old age. His latest work is an attempt to combat senility. This he tries to do by diminishing the amount of fermentation in the alimentary system. At first ho was bold onough to urge that the bowel, being useless, should be removed, but as this measurewas unlikely to meet universal approval, ho has suggested a less drastic measure He has studied the causes of longevity, and has been led to the belief that this is principally due to the consumption of simple food, especially milk. •

It is said that longevity is high in certain eastern European countries where sour milk is the main, if not the exclusive, article of diet. Apart from the fact that milk loaves a relatively small undigested residue, the souring bacteria, according to Metchnikoff, displaced the harmful bacteria, and thus, if the consumption of sour milk .were eontjimod over a long period, our lives would be prolonged.

Napoleon has been described as possessing the natural "master-mind" in military affairs. The same may be ,said of Martell in tho manufacture of Brandy. '