The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-27
WHY WE GROW OLD?
THIS WRITER DECLARES THERE
 IS LITTLE NEED OF IT.
Signs of Decay in Animals and Men How the COntractile Tissue or the Muscles May be Preserved
 from the MacrOphagfs As- eaults.

New York World.
 The arproximare cause of failure of power in old age are now coming to be fairly we'll understood. Everybody knows that the different parts Of the human organism daily die and are re- newed, that the scarf-skin loses the vitality necessary to protect the true and peels off, and that even the cells of the bones are exchanged for new ones, until 1t may be said that the man who lives beyond maturity retains no part of the body that he was born with.
 Hence it was at one time taught, says T. P.'s Weekly that the signs of seniifty were due to failure on the part of the repairing cells to perform their functions. But this is seen to be fallacy. Such hair as an old man does retain on his head grows with greater quickness than when he was young. On the limbs, within the nos trils and ears. hair gets more abund- ant and stronger and with the Mongo- Han race the beard does not appear until very late in life. The finger and toe nails which are formed by the same secretion as the hair, grow fast CT in old age than in youth. Plainly. therefore, 1t is not the repairing cells that are at fault.
 The true cause of senility must therefore, be looked for deeper and 1t seems that we find it in the voracity or certain wandering cells always present in our bodies. Some of these cells. which physiologists class together as macrophagi. seize upon the coloring matter of the hair and make 1t white; others devour the contractile tissue of tho muscles while yet others take from the bones the mineral substances necessary for their healthy existence, and reduce them to the brittle condi- ton which makes falls and other inju- ries so often fatal to the old. Mean while similar cells are at work upon the liver and the kidneys.
 Can nothing be done to arrest these giant cells in their Began and Goneril- like attack upon the parent who gave them life? Professor Metchnikoff' whose researches on the subject have lately attracted much attention. thinks that there can. He suggests the use of counter -poisons, either in the shape of attenuated cultures of the very bac- illi in question, or by direct antidotes. among which he mentions milk treated with a special ferment coming from Bulgaria, which stimulates the secre- tion of tactic acid and raises up other microbes to fight against the hurtful ones.
 But he warns us that his theory as yet depend more upon conjecture than on fact, and the only proofs of it that he adduces are the activity of the macrophagi in bacterial diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis, and the very reduced proportions in long-lived anil mals such as birds and tortoises Of that large intestines which in mann mals is the chosen home of microbes.
 More practical. perhaps. arc the rules of longevity which he himself quotes from our own countryman' pr Weber, and which may almost be sum med up fin the Greek maxim. "Nothing In excess"
 Most of us eat too much, and for 2 man making no special demand on his strength four and one-half ounces of nitrogenous food and three and half ounces of fats or other hydrocarbons per day are ample. Sleep, too, should not be prolonged beyond six or seven hours, according to sex; and 1t may be doubted whether the frequent maps to which old age is so naturally dispos- cd do not give occasions to the macro- phagi of which they arc prompt to take advantage. Wine, which has of ten been called the blood of the aged. has as often proved their bane, and should be taken sparingly. Exercise constant, daily and regular-is of the greatest advantage.
 By such means the contractile tissue of the muscles may be preserved from the mcrophagfs assaults, while the di- gestive apparatus, imperilled alike by the loss Of teeth and the decay of &C., tivity in the excretory organs, may be kept in working order.
 Without insisting upon the doubtless exceptional case of Nj. Legouve, the veteran Academician. who fenced daily up to his death as a nonagenarian, 1t may be enough to quote in this connec- tion that in the South African war a large properties of those fighting against us wer,, white haired men of sixty and upward. and that the expec- tation of life in an agricultural labor CT of seventy Is a good deal better than in an alderman of the same age.
 By an observance of such rules 1t seems that a man untouched by in- lection or constitutional disease may