The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1880-04-08
PROPER DURATION OF HUMAN
LIFE.

The philosophers ideal of human
health and the duration of human life
which DR.. Richardson has distinguished
himself 30 deservedly by expounding,
may be, with our present means and
knowledge, Utopian: but it is a noble
ideal to be kept before us. Quoting au,
thorities, DR., Richardson says that life
extends naturally to FIVE times the mum.
ber of years required in the various or.
ders of animals to arrive at maturity.
The elephant is young at thirty, and
lives to hundred and fifty; the horse
natures at FIVE, and lives to twenty-five
years; the lion and OK mature at four,
and live to twenty years; the cat ma
lures at eighteen months, and its full age
is seven and half years. Arguing
from the body of ascevtained facts of
which these are specimens, DR.. Richard.
son says that in the case of man he ar.
Tives at maturity about twenty, and
ought, therefore, to live to one hundred.
The body ceases to grow at the age Of
twenty years, but it does not cease to in.
crease until forty, at which age it reaches
it's most complete physical condition.
During the next thirty years, or at the
age of seventy, called the period OF in
vigoration, all the functions become or
ought to become more certain, all its or
gans more perfect. At seventy old age
should begin and last for about fifteen
years, and from eighty-fve to hundred
there should be ripe old age, not &C
companied by disease or pain, but mark
ed by gradual subsistence of the vital
functions. ...
The possibility of gradually arriving at
this prolongation OF the active, inyesLi.
eating, inventive and thinking years Of
human life is the most limitless of all the
latent resources of civilization. With
the present average of longevity in
Britain of forty or fifty years, the course
OF public policy. peace or war, wisdom
or folly, is determined by men and
women Of the imperfect and misleading
experience and reflection which are at.
tanned at about thirty. In community
living on the average twice as long as at
present, the control OF affairs would be
in the hands of men fortified by the
large wisdom Of fifty or sixty years, and
every question, public or private, would
be judged by men and women undis-
tulbed in the exercise of their faculties,
by defective health or distressing pain.
Consider even now what bound for.
ward we should accomplish if for sin.
gle twelve month there was not single |
headache among the Euglish speaking |
races. But not only would the absence |
Of pain and disease prolong and render |
more productive in every material and |
mental sense the application Of human |
labor and enterprise, but among it's ear. |
liest effects would be the development
of the degrees of symmetry and beauty |
Ia the human frame.
Deformity is no part of nature, and to
any one who observes it plain that ma.
ture never ceases ia its efforts to dimin
ish or cure IT, and, what is more, nature
Is ever on the alert to translate into per.
fection of faculty and form any improved
circumstances of physical condition in
food, clothing, shelter or the abolition of
degrading labor which may chance to be
arrived at by community, and 80 it
comes about that the eye of reflective
science, aided by the growing certainties
Of knowledge, can even now see that the
tendebcies toward higher physical life
within the reach Of human powers are
beyond the DIRE inns Of any Of the popular
gympathies. s'es7s ,'.- -,',.1 '.'''''''