The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-02
WE SHOULD LIVE LONGER
 THAN OUR GRANDFATHERS

infectious diseases were so well under stood and their prevention so easily ac- .somplished that according to all the rules of liability for criminal negligence for every man who died of typhoid fever some one ought to be shot. Again an eminent English surgeon, Frederick Treves, said: The time will come when it will be as anomalous for persons to die of scarlet fever, typhoid, cholera, or dphtherla as for man to die of a wolf's bite in England"
 There is a. growing realization that the old belief in the extraor- dinary strength. size and longevity Of the early inhabitants of this earth was founded chiefly on fiction. That all living things have a tendency, through the inherent property of proto- plasm, to grow old from the very be- ginning of life, appears to have rather increased than decreased the tremendous interest that has always been associated with the question of the probable dura- ton of life.
 This is not surprising since the new biological conception of life and the re- cent discoveries in sanitary science place the chief responsibility of prolonging life. with certain limitations, upon the individual and the community.
 AS NdIldllOH III 6ioNAll IS AOoS letNA AAi life than in early childhood, it is prob able that the possible final achievement of the body, like a spent ball, is more easily affected adversely by deficient nu- triton late than early in life. Contrary to the popular opinion that there is & period of development followed at ma turity by a period of decline of the vital forces, there appears to be a continuous decline from the beginning to the end of life.
 This continuous decline of the vital forces of living matter has been roughly compared to a clock, the handspring of which suffers gradual loss of elasticity from molecular changes until winding will no longer make it run. The renewed energy given to the clock by winding is supposed to represent the renewed en- ergy that comes to the body through the food we eat and the air we breathe, while the loss of elasticity in the spring through molecular changes is supposed to represent the loss of vital force through molecular changes in the body.
 Again, the growth and decline of the body has been compared to a man build ing a wall. It is said that a man builds a wall which keeps on growing but as the man becomes tired it will increase
 more slowly and finally cease to grow altogether when he is worn out. So the vital forces build the body which devel- cps, but all the while the forces are losing their power. The cessation of growth, then, Is not due to the body reaching maturity but is merely final term in a series of losses.
 "As soon as we bee begunne, we did beginne to be undone."
 Although no law has been or probably can be formulated on the subject, wide range of observation appears to indi- cate that the sooner an organism reaches maturity the shorter will be its duration and that in many animals the whole duration of life is some five or six times the periods required for complete develop ment
 | Thus man is from 20 to 25 years reaching maturity, he should live from lOC to 125 or 130 years. That even the great est of these possibilities have been ex- ceeded by both man and woman in many instances the records of centenarians abundantly prove.