The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1923-02-17
SPEED CUTTING
DOWN LIFE SPAN
Average Age of Mankind Fell
From 81 to 81 in Last Nine
Years, Says Scientist.
FINDS AVIATORS Die YOUNG
Predicts If Ever AirpIanes Become
General Means of Locomotion
Span of Life viii Be
Cut to 40 or As.

| Paris.-In the nearly nine years
the average age of mankind has fallen
from ffty-seven to fifty-one, accord
ing to statistics compiled by the Dan
fsh professor, Carl Fischer, and read
before the French Academy of
Sciences.
Not the war directly, but the fact
that the war speeded up life is the
cause for this, asserts Fischer.
Before the automobile became gen.
eral the average age in Europe at
which men died was SIXTY" he said.
Even in 1914 the automobile, while
universal, was still not vehicle for
the common people. But now the man
who rides on or behind a horse is
rarity, while legs are becoming In
creasingly obsolete as means of loco
motion.
1.-THE human constitution demands a
certain degree of exercise which is
best obtained by activity in the ordi-
nary round of existence. The man
who walks to his office every morning
has a better chance to live to three
score and ten than the man who goes
in his limousine or who takes the
subway or autobus.
AvIators Die Young.
Few men who devote their lives to
the fascination of speed live long. I
recently investigated the average age
of aviators, past and present, and
found it to be only thirty-six.
There are, of course, other causes
for the reduction in the normal life
span. They include the growing ten
dency to degeneracy and looseness of
morals to be remarked through the
world. This, however, I regard as a
of the reign of speed. A
man who travels fast lives fast in
without compromising it by wholesome
ut is deplorable to find this con-
tendency in the human
makeup which will permit him by his
own negligence to counterfeit the Ia
bors of doctors and scientists who are
giving their lives to his welfare
While savants in their laboratories
are striving to discover cures and |
ways of prevention for diseases now |
argely responsible for the high death |
ate, the man in the street defeats |
heir object by living at such an alb
normal rate that his constitution, fear
'ully overworked, eventually gives up.
The Age of Man.
ut is a question whether our CON
;titutions will adapt themselves in
ime to this new era of speed, but the
esult of my investigations leads me
o believe that this is unlikely.
"a study of the age of man will re
cal that the average life span has
allen with each increase in the speed
f universal locomotion. When mer
raveled in OK carts and afoot a cen
ury was an ordinary lifetime. When
he horse became universal the normal
ge dropped to eighty and then to
evenly. At the time of Jesus Christ
he average age of man wos seventy
ne 'threescore-years ten Of 1e-
end
"Then came the locomotive and
-ithin fifty years as many years were
,pped off the average lifetime as ha6
reviously heen taken off in more than .
DO centuriesi This was because the
comotiVe came into general use be.
ire the human constitution had had I
me to effect even a partial readjust- /
ent
Before the body machine had re- /
'vered there came the automobile, /
Id then the airplane. Should the II
tier ever become a general means Il
locomotion I do not hesitate to pre- II
ct that within twenty years there X
ter the average span of human ex. II
-ence Will have been reduced to for II
or forty-five.' *