II Suggestions for the Prolongation of Life
Ancient methods of prolonging human life—Gerokomy—The “immortality draught” of the Taoists—Brown-Séquard’s method—The spermine of Poehl—Dr. Weber’s precepts—Increased duration of life in historical times—Hygienic maxims—Decrease in cutaneous cancer
Men of all times have attempted all manner of devices to bring about an increase of years, although they have not considered the problem in its general bearing.
In Biblical times it was believed that contact with young girls would rejuvenate and prolong the life of feeble old men. In the first Book of Kings it is related as follows:—
“Now King David was old and stricken in years; and they covered him with clothes, but he gat no heat.
“Wherefore his servants said unto him, Let there be sought for my Lord the king a young virgin; let her stand before the king and let her cherish him, and let her lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat” (Kings I., chap. i.).
This device, afterwards called gerokomy, was employed by the Greeks and Romans, and has had followers in modern times. Boerhave, the famous Dutch physician (1668-1738), “recommended an old burgomaster of Amsterdam to lie between two young girls, assuring him that he would thus recover strength and spirits.” After quoting this, Hufeland, the well-known author of “Macrobiotique” in the eighteenth century, made the following reflection:—“If it be remembered how the exhalations from newly opened animals stimulate paralysed limbs, and how the application of living animals soothes a violent pain, we cannot refuse our approval to the method.”107
Cohausen, a doctor of the eighteenth century, published a treatise on a Roman, Hermippus, who had died aged a hundred and fifteen years. He had been a master in a school for young girls, and his life, passed in their midst, was greatly prolonged. “Accordingly,” commented Hufeland (p. 6), “he gives the excellent advice to breathe the air of young girls night and morning, and gives his assurance that by so doing the vital forces will be strengthened and preserved, as adepts know well that the breath of young girls contains the vital principle in all its purity.”
In the Eastern half of the world equal ingenuity was exercised in the attempt to rejuvenate the body and renew the forces of man. The successors of Lao-Tsé searched for a beverage that would confer immortality and have recounted extraordinary matters concerning it.
The Emperor of China, Chi-Hoang-Ti (221-209 B.C.), displayed extreme friendliness to the Taoists, believing that these had the secret of long life and immortality. In his reign, Su-Chi, a Taoist magician, persuaded him that eastwards of China there lay fortunate islands inhabited by genii whose pleasure it was to give their guests to drink of a beverage conferring immortality. Chi-Hoang-Ti was so delighted with the news that he equipped an expedition to discover the islands.108
Later on, in the dynasty of the Tchengs (618-907), when Taoism had again become a religion in favour at court, efforts were made to obtain imperial patronage for the draught of immortality, and magicians were in high favour. The Taoist writers called this drink Tan or Kin-Tan, the “golden elixir.” According to Mayers, the chief ingredients of this marvellous compound were “cinnabar, the red sulphate of mercury, and a red salt of arsenic, potassium and mother-of-pearl. The preparation of it required nine months, and it passed through nine changes. One who had drunk of it was changed to a crane, and in this form could ascend to the dwellings of the genii, there to abide with them.”109
The Taoists represent their saints, in the shade of willows, seeking the elixir of life, and in Chinese Buddhist temples there are placed votive cakes shaped like the tortoise, a sacred animal and the symbol of long life. Worshippers let stones of divination fall on these cakes and so ascertained if their lives were to be prolonged, promising for each subsequent year as many cakes as the divinity might demand.
The mysticism of the East reached Europe in the Middle Ages, and then, and even in modern times, drugs were used to prolong life. Cagliostro, the celebrated quack of the eighteenth century, boasted that he had discovered an elixir of life by the use of which he had survived for many thousand years.
There still exists, in some modern pharmacopœias, an “elixir ad longam vitam” compounded of aloes and other purgatives. Analogous preparations are known, such as the “vital essence of Augsburg” which is a mixture of purgatives and resins.
Serious physicians have rejected such preparations of the quacks. They have abandoned the search for a specific, and, in their efforts to prolong human life, have relied on common rules of hygiene, such as cleanliness, exercise, fresh air, and general sobriety. In our own days, Brown-Séquard is an isolated instance of a seeker for a specific against senescence. This distinguished physiologist, setting out from the view that the weakness of old men is due partly to diminution of the secretions of the testes, hoped to find a remedy in the employment of subcutaneous injections of emulsions of the testes of animals (dogs and guinea-pigs). Brown-Séquard,110 then aged 72 years, gave himself several such injections, and declared that he found himself reinforced and rejuvenated. Since then, numbers of persons have undergone the treatment which for a time was in vogue. The observations of physicians, made on old men and sick persons, have not justified the hopes which were entertained of the mode of treatment. Fürbringer,111 in particular, working in Germany, has discredited the injections of Brown-Séquard. However, instead of following exactly the original prescription, Fürbringer employed a testicular emulsion which had been previously raised to the boiling-point. Brown-Séquard’s method has not resisted scientific investigation, and although it is still occasionally employed in France, it has been given up in many countries.
Brown-Séquard laid stress on the efficacy of emulsions of testis as opposed to chemical substances prepared from the gland. Other scientific men, on the other hand, have attached value to such substances and in particular to an organic alkali the salt of which is known as spermine. That salt, made by Poehl of St. Petersburg, has been largely used. Several observers declare that its employment, injected in solution or even absorbed directly as a powder, has been followed by a strengthening of bodily power enfeebled by age or labour.
As I have no personal experience of spermine, I shall quote from Professor Poehl112 some indications of its efficacy. Several physicians (Drs. Maximovitch, Bukojemsky, Krieger and Postoeff) have given injections of spermine to enfeebled old men who had lost appetite and sleep, and have noted improvement lasting for months. From the instances given, I have selected that of an old lady of ninety-five years, afflicted with severe sclerosis of the arteries, with no appetite, a bad digestion and constipation. This patient had complained for several years of sacral pains, and moreover was nearly quite deaf and suffered from periodic attacks of malarial fever. The injections of spermine, given for a period of fifteen months, restored the old lady to such an extent that she recovered her power of hearing and felt the sacral pains only slightly and after a long walk. Her general condition was highly satisfactory.
Spermine, as it has been used medically, is prepared not only from the testes of animals but from the prostate gland, ovary, pancreas, thyroid gland and spleen. The substance is not specially associated with spermatozoa but has a wide distribution in the mammalian body.
In the medical treatment of the evils of old age, testicular emulsions or spermine have not been so favoured as general hygienic measures. Dr. Weber,113 a London medical man, has recently summarised more general measures, and his evidence is the more important as he has been able to test the efficacy of his precepts in his own case. Dr. Weber is 83 years old, and in his practice has cared for many other old men.
The following are the precepts which Dr. Weber formulated: All the organs must be preserved in a condition of vigour. It is necessary to recognise and subdue any morbid tendencies whether these be hereditary or have been acquired during life. It is necessary to be moderate in food and drink, and in all other physical pleasures. The air should be pure in the dwelling and in the vicinity. It is necessary to take exercise daily, whatever be the weather. In many cases the respiratory movements must be specially exercised, and exercise on level ground and up-hill should be taken. The persons should go to bed early and rise early, and not sleep for more than six or seven hours. A bath should be taken daily and the skin should be well rubbed, the water used being hot or cold, according to taste. Sometimes it is advantageous to use hot and cold water. Regular work and mental occupation are indispensable. It is useful to stimulate the enjoyment of life so that the mind may be tranquil and full of hope. On the other hand, the passions must be controlled and the nervous sensations of grief avoided. Finally, there must be a resolute intention to preserve the health, to avoid alcohol and other stimulants as well as narcotics and soothing drugs.
By following his own precepts, Dr. Weber has enjoyed a vigorous and happy old age. A Mde. Nausenne, who died on March 12th, 1756, at the age of 125 years, in the Dinay Infirmary (Côtes-du-Nord) explained the secret of her still greater longevity as follows: “Extreme sobriety, no worry, body and mind quite calm” (Chemin, op. cit., p. 101).
Hygienic measures have been the most successful in prolonging life and in lessening the ills of old age.
Although until quite recently hygiene has rested upon a very small number of scientifically established facts, and although its precepts have not been followed rigidly, none the less it has already succeeded in increasing the duration of human life. This becomes evident if we compare the mortality tables of the present day with those of the past.
There is reason to state definitely that the mortality in civilised countries has decreased on the whole in the last one or two centuries. I have taken some facts regarding this from the valuable monograph of M. Westergaard.114 That author came to the conclusion that the mortality rate in the 19th century in civilised countries was “much lower than in most earlier centuries.” This diminution has been chiefly in infantile mortality. According to Mallet, the mortality rate of infants in the first year of their life was, in Geneva, 26 per cent. in the 16th century, and fell gradually to 16-1/2 per cent. at the beginning of the 19th century. A similar change has been reported from Berlin, Holland, Denmark and other places. However, it is not only very young infants that have shown a diminution in the death-rate. The life of old people has been prolonged to an extent equally remarkable. The following are some of the facts which support this statement. Whilst the old Protestant clergymen of Denmark at ages varying from 74-1/2 to 89-1/2 years had a mortality rate of 22 per cent. in the second half of the 18th century, the rate had sunk to 16·4 per cent. by the middle of the 19th century. This is not an isolated fact. The old clergymen of England (65 to 95 years) have also come to live longer, because in the 18th century the mortality rate was 11·5 per cent. and in the 19th century (1800-1860) only 10·8 per cent. There has been a similar decrease in the mortality rate in the members of both sexes of the Royal Houses of Europe (Westergaard, p. 284).
From 1841 to 1850, in England and Wales 162·81 individuals out of every thousand of both sexes died annually, but the corresponding figure for the period 1881 to 1890 was decreased to 153·67 per thousand.
Westergaard (p. 296) has displayed in a most useful table the mortality in the chief countries of Europe and in the State of Massachusetts, in two periods of time. In the case of old persons from 70 to 75 years, there has been a constant decrease in the death-rate, without any exceptions. The exact statistics collected by Pension Bureaus and Life Assurance Companies exhibit the same general tendency.
It cannot be disputed then that there has been a general increase in the duration of life, and that old people live longer at the present time than in former ages. This fact, however, cannot be taken absolutely, and it is still possible that in particular cases there may have been more centenarians hitherto than at present.
The prolongation of life which has come to pass in recent centuries must certainly be attributed to the advance of hygiene. The general measures for the preservation of health, although they were not specially directed to old people, have had an effect of increasing their longevity. As in the 18th century and for the greater part of the 19th, the science of hygiene was in a very rudimentary condition, we may well believe that improvement in cleanliness and in the general conditions have contributed largely to the prolongation of life. It is now a long time since Liebig said that the amount of soap used could be taken as a measure of the degree of civilisation of a people. As a matter of fact, cleanliness of the body brought about in the most simple way, by washing with soap, has had a most important effect in lessening disease and mortality from disease. In this connection, the fact recently published by Prof. Czerny,115 a well-known German surgeon, has a special interest. Although cancer, the special scourge of old age, has increased in recent times, one form of the disease, cancer of the skin, has diminished notably. “Cancers of the skin,” Prof. Czerny says, “are met with almost exclusively on uncovered regions of the body, or on parts accessible to the hands. They develop especially where the susceptibility is increased by ulcers or scars which are easily soiled. And so it happens that in the classes where care is taken as to cleanliness cancer of the skin is very rare and certainly much more rare than it used to be.”
M. Westergaard thinks that vaccination against small-pox has been of considerable importance in lowering the death-rate in the 19th century. This, however, can have had little effect on the duration of life in old people, as deaths due to small-pox in the old are excessively rare. For instance, in the second half of the 18th century, that is to say before the introduction of Jenner’s method, the mortality from small-pox at Berlin was 9·8 per cent. of all the deaths, but of these only 0·6 per cent. were cases of persons more than fifteen years old. The rest, that is to say, 99·3 per cent. fell on children under that age. It may be supposed that most of the old people at that time were already protected by previous attacks of small-pox, contracted when they were young.
If hygiene were able to prolong life when it was little developed, as was the case until recently, we may well believe that, with our greater knowledge of to-day, a much better result will be obtained.