The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-11-29
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HAsKN. Director.
Washington, D. G.
\ CENSUS OF CENTENARIANs.

Washington, D. c., Nov. "a sta
tistical study OF persons who have
lived for a hundred years or more is
| to be one of the undertakings this
year of the census bureau which is
preparing a report on the wages of
persons now living in the United
! States.
! It may be hazarded that this will
be one of the most popular reports
ever put out by the bureau, for men
| have always shown an almost morbid
interest in the problem of prolonging
| life. They used to believe that by the
spring they might cheat death for
ever. 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 evidence that
average lie is being prolonged is read
with eager interest.
There is manifestly something I'M
sound in this attitude. The average
human life has been heightened since
the middle ages, but largely by reduc-
| ing infant mortality and prolonging
| tho period of senile decay. What we
I actually get out of life is not meas
ured by the average number of years
| men live. but by the length of the ac
| tive period and still more by what
/ they do with it. More encouraging
| than the lengthening of the average
| expectation of human life is the fact.
reported by the census bureau, that
persons of middle age and past show
a constantly increasing range of &C
| tivity. 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 mO1e old persons marry, too, and
the census bureau is especially inter-
ested in these. The active creative
period of life for men is apt to CORE
spond to the duration of their virility.
Aged Writers.
Literature has shown some striking
examples in late years of produc-
tivity in old men. Joseph Friend De
Morgan, the novelist who recently
died, began his writing career after
60 and wrote series or novels or
high merit. Thomas Hardy at 81 is
He wrote all of his novels before he
was 20, and then turned 10 poetry
and made a great reputation in that
branch of literature. George Bran
des, the Danish critic, and the most
famous of all Danes, IS so and still
an active writer and a man of world
influence.
A study of the ages of men who are
attending the Washington conference
would be interesting. 1t would GER
years of age are guiding the political
destinies of the world. OF course
statesmen have generally been elderly
men. Nor are there any statistics
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-
ours with scientific opinion, which
holds that man should normally live,
or ha
Bible, but about twice that long The
idea seems to have been first adj.
vanced by Metchnikoff. It is the un=sl
DERIVING iGea of Bernard Shaw's latest
play, Back to Methuselah," which
pictures the human race as Shaw be-
heves it will be in the distant future.
1t shows a race of men far past the
century mark, who have attained to
great serenity and wisdom and free
dom from passion, but still retain
their health.
That is what Metchnikoff believed
men will become. In an acute study
of 1.-THE Nature of Man. he showed
that the human body contains many
"disharmonies, as he called them.
That is, as a machine it does not work
perfectly, with the result that 1t
breaks down from internal friction
and disturbance before it should. The
digestive tract is always poisoning his
whole body, he pointed out. because it
is not suited to digest the food of civ
ilization. But it is perfectly possible
for both the food and the digestive
tract to be adjusted so that this poi |
soning may be overcome. Metchni- !
koff devoted most of his life to this
problem, and these researches are still
being carried on by his associates in |
the Pasteur Institute.
Improving the Human Machine.
Meantime. science has discovered
more and more ways in which it may |
perfect the human body as a working
machine. It his been found that the |
ductlesS glands, which were formerly |
not Understood at all. control almost |
all phases of human development. and |
it looks as tho a perfect understand |
ing of them alone would make pos
sible the almost indefinite prolonga- !
ton of human life. barring accident. |
In fact, DR.. II. 2. FriedenberG of New |
York told the Pennsylvania Medical |
society that man with a perfect en- |
doctrine system might live forever.
At the same time psychoanalysis |
has laid bare the causes or many of |
the mental and nervous disharmonies |
which destroy men. It has come to |
seem possible that much nervous dis |
ease and insanity may be prevented I
childhood.
When one considers what science |
has done in the comparatively few
years that it has existed, it takes no
great Imagination to realize that Ber- /
nard Shaw's vision of a race of men
living to be $50 years of age or more |
is not wholly fanciful. 1t is quite pos
sible that, if international warfare
with the help of poison gas does not
destroy the race and its civilization,
our descendants of few centuries
hence may look back upon this as an
age as benighted as the Stone Age
seems to us.
Metchnikoff believed-and Shaw re-
peats the idea-that the fear of death /
will disappear as life lengthens and
becomes more harmonious. He con- L
tended that death is natural and
necessary to man. and that his fear of
death is due to the fact that he is
ways cut off before he has had his
normal fill of living. The man who
has enjoyed $50 years of health and
of complete fulfillment of his needs
and desires, mental and physical, will 4,