The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-01-11
THE ELIXIR OF YOUTH.
A Chemists Ideas Of What Causes Old Age
and the Secret of Youth.

A great many people are not averse to long
life and these persons note with nolittle degree of
satisfaction that the days of the years Of mans
life, under the more agreeable surroundings of
modern civilization, are increasing Ethnolo-
gsts no longer regard three and ten, or
four scour years as the extremity of life. w. j.
Thoms, who wrote book on longevity. exam
ined the record of those whose names are given
as having lived beyond that age, and found few
authentic accounts Of such alleged centenarians.
The cases of 'Old Parr," who is supposed to have
lived to the age of 152 years, and Henry Jen
kins, another old son of old England. who is
supposed to have lived to 169 years, can neither
be verified nor disproved.
Genesis. sixth chapter. third verse, says of
man, his days shall be hundred and twenty
years"-showing the apparent limit of life in
that epoch; later, the ninetieth Psalm, tenth
verse, says: ''The days of our years are three
score years and ten; and it, by of strength,
they be four score years. yet is their strength
labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut
off, and we fly away" The only other
notable reference in the Bible to this subject is
in the apochryphal book Ecclesiastcus, eight
of a mans life as one hundred years. The Chi
nese believe the extremity of life to be one hun
dred years, but they evidently think that seven
ty years is ripe old age, and man who has
reached and passed that period is called "a rare
bird of age"-a rara avis.
Flourens, the naturalist, says q man is twenty
years in growing, and therefore, his extremity
OF life should be FIVE times that period. He di-
vides the stages of existence as follows: From
birth to ten years is infancy; ten to twenty
years, adolescence; twenty to thirty years, first
youth; thirty to forty years, second youth; forty
TO fifty-fve years, first manhood fifty-fve to
seventy years, second manhood; seventy to
eighty i've years, first old age; eighty-6ve to
one hundred years, second and last old age.
Victor Hugo who retained his intellectual vigor
to the last, held similar view, characterizing
fifty as the old age of youth and the youth of
old age" Button said man who does not die
of disease lives everywhere to ninety or one
hundred years Thoms also puts the limit at
one hundred years.
II was the idea of the old Greeks that the
death of the aged was occasoned more by a
stoppage OF the channels of the body than a
lack of vital force. DR.. s. w. Caldwell recently
called attention to the cause of old age, and in
dicated that it is chiefly caused by a deposit of
gelatlnous, fbrinous and calcareous substances
tnrOugnOut the tissues or the 0OQY. he D0ll0VeS
that the vital force is sufficient to allow the
human animal to live indefinitely We're it not
that the tissues become so clogged up with cal
careous salts as to impede nutrition and the cir
culation of the blood, and that such state of
affairs causes death is sufficiently indicated by
the stiffness of old age Calcareous salts are
being constantly introduced into the system in
the food we eat, and to still greater extent in
the hard water we drink, and he suggests that
the use of soft water would have tendency to
lengthen life.
1.-THE proof that the deposit of earthly salts pro-
duces DEATH" said Ansel w. Moffatt, the chemist,
to the reporter, lis shown in the falling of the
leaves of deciduous trees and the whitening
of the leaves of plants and grasses.
Plants draw their water from The soil and give it
ont again through the leaves. So the greater
part of the soluble matter contained in the water
is left in the leaves, and thus their pores finally
become stopped up expiration is no longer pos
sible, and they wither or fall off. TO the same
cause. the deposition of calcareous salts is due in
great measure the death of the heart-wood of
trees. So you see, man is. as the Bible says,
literally cut down like the grass. The salts
already deposited in the human body in the
bones do not interfere with nutrition or with
circulation but those deposited in the tissues do.
Then follows the suggestion that the use of pure
soft water would be solvent for the earthly de-
posts in the tissues, assisted by diluted phos-
phoric acid which has the power to dissolve
phosphate salts, which would then be eliminated
through the kidneys, and ultimately reduce the
body to more plastic condition"
Why" inquired the reporter, us it not
within the bounds of possibility for modern
science to invent some great solvent that would
keep us young and prevent us from growing old?"
ut is not beyond the possibilities of chemistry,
nor is to be assumed that the alchemists, who
sought for the elixir of life. charlatans de-
ceiving others and self-deceived. There has
been no inconsiderable amount Of literature,
history and fiction, devoted to the subject In
fiction the matter is treated of in Bulwer's novel
of Zanoni, and Alexander Dumas, pere, presents
the Count Cagliostro as the possessor of the Sc
cret of life. DR. Hood the celebrated Rosicru-
clan, who claimed to have the secret of the elixir,
is said to have reached the age of one hundred
years, which would appear to be proof of the
pudding. That the vital force is sufficient to
last beyond the human animals natural las we
now consider i'll term Of life is indicated by the
mental vigor of many men who have passed the
three score and ten limit men whose mental fac
ulties continue undirnmed, while the body is
decrepit from its accumulation of the salts of
the earth"