Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1916-07-17
FOUNTAINS OF
IMMORTALITY,
Ellie Metchnikoff Found in Sour
Milk the Springs of Bimini
Sought by Ponce
de Leon


i the other day, was loss to science as
much as it was a loss to the great hope Of
the world. The great hope is eternal
youth, and so long as Metchnikoff lived
there were many who believed that he
would find n way to those mythical
springs which have captivated the
imagination of mankind since time be.
gan. In strict accuracy 1t must be said
that MetchnlIoff was at least ninety per
cent. more moderate than his eXploiters.
He never found cure" for old age, nor
, did he discover a nostrum for this worlds
ills. But he was supposed to have done
this, and the world likes to believe that
he had.
one of the earliest references to the
waters that heal and make whole Is that
in the story of achilles who was dipped
in the Styx, paradoxically the river OF
Death, to render him invulnerable Alas
for the world that In every spring of
life there still turks death unseen for
just as Thetls forgot to dip Achilles heel
so moderns, wherever they battle or
drink, fail somewhere to guard them.
selves. In the Middle Ages and after, in
the Renaissance, the search for an elixir
of life went on as furiously as the search
for the philosophers stone. which was
not a stone at all, but which was sup.
posed to dissolve out all baser elements
and transmute everything into gold. So
seriously was the latter taken, by the
way, that Roger Bacon, in searching for
It, discovered the true elixir of death, gun.
powder.
In classic days there was plenty of in.
centive for seeking the fountain of youth,
because there was established precedent
Iolaus was restored to youth, and so was
Phaon, beloved of Sappho. In the caul'
dron of Medea an old ram was cast and
came forth renewed, and through her
Aeson and Jason were young again. 1t Is
no wonder that with the return of mems
sympathies to ancient days, the fountain
of youth was sought again. The most
notable of all excursions made in its be.
half was that of Ponce de Leon, the
Spanish explorer, who subjugated Porto
Rico en- route For some reason the foun'
tain, from which to drink or in which
to bathe was so revitalizing, was placed
in the Bahamas, on the little island OF
Bimini There Ponce de Leon came to
his bitter disappointment, but the spring
which still persists Is visited as a shrine
by the sick and is supposed to possess
healing qualities.
Ben Jonson. in THE Alchemist" speaks
of an elixir thus:
He that has once the Flower of the Sun,
Tho perfect ruby which we call elixir.
Can. confer honor love, respect long life
Give safety, vaor, yea, and victory,
To whom he will. In eight-and-twenty
days
I'll make an old man of fourscore child.
Which is roughly speaking, large order
even for a precious stone
The rubies, potions and concoctions OF Z
the ancients were not so closely linked to I
religious beliefs as those of more mod.
ern time. But in the last fifty years the
swing has been back to the earlier type
of magic, and the work of Metchnikof Is
symptomatic of the return. For his dis
coveries were purely scientific. 1t was not
10 be born again, but to make the first
birth more extensive that he offered. II
must always be remembered that Metch'
nitoff was a bacteriologist.
Metchnikoff. the Russian, Joined the
hands of Virchow. the German, and Pas
teur, the Frenchman. in a triple alliance
of research. Virchow had discovered the
white corpuscles, Pasteur the microbes.
first found the relation be-
tween them, that the white corpuscles
were the body's defensive agents against
the microbes. All the work which made
him famous outside of his class, that is
popular scientist, derives from that dis
covery. Metchnkoff sought to the end for
3arnf at1 ha
corpuscles in their losing fight against
the microbes OF death. He was impressed
with the violence of our resistance to
death, and as he was an atheist, without
definite views or hopes of a future life,
he felt that our desire to live on ought
to be gratified. Moreover, his study of
the human body convinced him that 1t
was so constructed as to persist for more
than three score and ten years, and to
persist at a higher tension than 1t now
does Birds, he noted, retained their
speed and their agility until almost the
time of their death. MetchnilSoff, after
careful 1tudy, decided that the operations
Of the large intestines in the human body
were at fault, for destructive microbes
could gather there and the agency for
their removal, sugar, could not reach the
large intestines intact, He prophesied
that the time would come when that or
gan would be removed as simply as the
appendix now is.
Metchnikoff drew his argument for
life OF more than a century from the fact
that where he was born, Little Russia,
and In Bulgaria. where much sour milk Is
drunk, many persons live to be over
century. The trouble with the argument
Is the trouble with most cures. If
a man is at absolute rest in the Swiss
Alps takes sufficient exercise, does not
worry, has no opportunity for smoking
or drinking, and eats grapes he will prob
ably be restored TO health and say the
grapes did it. Metehnikofr did go further
because he was a scientist, not an Inn
keeper. He showed how and why the
bacillus found In buttermilk fought and
destroyed the agencies which shortened
human life. He promised nothing exces: