Arizona republican., 1921-12-06
Rx Frederio J. Haakin


 WASHINGTON, Dec. 0.--A statls- , tical study of persons who have lived for hundred years or more is to be one of the undertakings this year Of the census bureau, which is preparing report on the ages of persons now living in the United States.
 1t may be hazarded that this will be enc of the most popular reports ever put out by the bureau, for men have always shown an almost morbid in- terest in the problem of prolonging life. They used to believe that by the discovery of some wonderful elk ir or spring they might cheat death forever. Science has abolished that hope. Men know now that they must die, but they seem none-the-less to be eager to add a few years to their lives if possible. Every jot of evil Gence that average life is being pro- longed is read with eager interest.
 There Is manifestly something un- sound in this attitude. The average human life has been heightened since the Middle Ages, but largely by re- ducing infant mortality and prolong- ing the period of senile decay. What we actually get out of life is not measured by the average number of years men live, but by the length ot the active period and still more by what they do with it. More eEcour- aging than the lengthening of the average expectation Of human life is the fact, reported by the Census bu- reau, that persons of middle age and past show a constantly increasing range of activity. More and more achievement is put down every year to the credit of men and women who are old in years, but apparently not in vitality. More and more old per sons marry, too, and the Census bu- reau is especially interested in these. The active creative period of life for men is apt to correspond to the dura- ton of their virility.
 Aged Writers
 Literature has shown some striking examples in late years of productiv- ity in old men. Joseph Friend De Morgan, the novelist who recently died, began his writing career after GO and wrote a series of novels of high merit. Thomas Hardy at Sl is a lyric poet who produces steadily. He wrote all of his novels before he was 70, and then turned to poetry and made a great reputation in that branch of literature. George Brandes, the Danish critic and the most fa- nous of all Danes, is so and still an active writer and a man of world in fluence.
 A study of the ages of men who are attending the Washington con ference would be interesting. It would certainly show that men of from 50 to 70 years of age are guiding the political destinies of the world. Of course, statesmen have geAerally been elderly men. Nor are there any sta tistics to prove that old men achieve more now than in former years, but there is a general impression abroad that they do so.
 Furthermore. this impression con- CUTS with scientific opinion, which holds that man should normally live not the three score and ten of the Bible, but about twice thatslong. The idea seems to have been first ad- vanced by Metchnikoff. It is the un- deriving idea of Bernard Shaw's lat est play, Back to Methuselah," which pictures the human race as Shaw be lieves it will be in the distant future It shows a race of men far past the century mark, who have attained tC great serenity and wisdom and free dom from passion,, but still retaiI their health.
 That is what Metchnil1off believed men will become. In an acute studN of ''The Nature of Man" he showed that the human body contf'as many "disharmonies," as he called them That is. as a machine it does no work perfectly, with the result thd it breaks down from internal friction and disturbance before it should. The digestive tract is always poisoning his whole body, he pointed out, be cause it is not suited to digest thu food of civilization But it is per fectly possible for both the food anC the digestive tract to be adjusted s' that this poisoning may be overcome Metchnikoff devoted most of his Tiff to this problem, and these researche are still being carried on by his as sociates in the Pasteur Institute. improving the Human Machine Meantime, science has disCovere' more and more ways in which it ma. perfect the human body as a work ing machine. It has been found tha the ductless glands, which were for | merly not understood at all. contrc | almost all phases of human develop | ment, and it looks as though a per 1 feet understanding of them alon would make possible the almost in | definite prolongation of human Tiff
 Friedenberg of NeG York told tn 1 Pennsylvania Medical Society that