The old man looked smugly at the young reporter from the town's weekly newspaper.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Ninety today and feel fit as a fiddle. Born in eighteen ten."

"Guess you're the only one that old in the county, Mr. Isherwood," said the reporter.

"Reckon so. Most people I grew up with died thirty-forty years ago. Some longer."

"To what do you attribute your long life, sir?"

"Lots of walkin' and simple eatin'. Never sick much. Never lived too high on the hog."

"Do you take any tonics, or medicine?"

"Nope. Oh, maybe somethin' in the spring, an' a little vinegar in water on occasion. Just guess I'm long-lifed like all my folks. My father, he lived to ninety-three. I got a brother eighty-two. Me, I'm the oldest in the family."

In this conversation which took place at the beginning of this century, some common facts were revealed. For one thing, the old man probably was one of the few people of his age alive in that area, or any area, in 1900. It was to be ex­pected that most of his contemporaries had been dead for many years. Life expectancy was shorter in those days. He was probably right in assuming that frequent longevity in his family might account for his own lengthy life.

If he had lived the "average life-expectancy" for his gen­eration, he probably would have died at about the age of 45. Up until 1901 that was the usual life-expectancy figure. So he had lived twice as long as might have been anticipated.

In the next 50 years the life-expectancy span of years was to rise almost spectacularly, up beyond 50 years, well into the 60s, and even into the 70s within another decade or so.

The fact that he had experienced little illness, also prob­ably contributed to his long life. The illnesses of the younger years may well reap their most serious results in later years.

"Lot of walkin' and simple eatin' " probably had much to do with his excellent health at age 90. Both could contribute significantly to retarding or preventing heart and circulatory disorders. Heredity may have been a factor.

Whether or not the vinegar was significant is a matter of opinion. It is part of the old New England folk medicine tradition. The efficacy of other folk medicines as ingredients of the elusive "fountain of youth" before the 20th century is highly doubtful. The life-expectancy of around 40-45 years stood for a long, long time.

What has happened since then?

We have good reason to ask the question. A quick look at the international scene points up world leaders well into their 60s, 70s, and even 80s who are doing heavy jobs with vigor and efficiency.

We have a nationally recognized retirement age of 65 years, strongly established with the introduction of social security in 1935. Yet we already are facing a problem of people over the retirement age who have no desire to retire, and who still are capable of many years of hard, productive work.

More and more, the 16 million "senior citizens" in the U. S. are becoming a most important factor in the American scene. Work for them; housing, medical care, recreation—the problems grow greater each year. Meanwhile, the average life-expectancy span creeps ever higher.

Every community and almost every family group of any size are experiencing adjustments caused by "senior citizens."

As Dr. Edward J. Stieglitz was quoted in 1952: "Longevity is here. An age of age is upon us. But not longevity with continued health and usefulness. Longevity is now handi­capped by long periods of relative uselessness, partly because of disability from chronic disease, partly because of social customs which put a premium upon youth and penalize the older individual both socially and economically in connection with his or her employment." {Great Adventures in Medicine, 1952.)

The socioeconomic problems concerning the 16 million who are 65 years of age, or over, fall beyond the scope of this book. The reason why we have so many of these older "senior citizens" may well fall within our subject matter. Without the great medical progress made during the last 75 years or so, people probably would still be living the much shorter life-spans.

That part of medical practice that is concerned with care of the aging and aged is called "geriatric" medicine.

However, experts warn that geriatric medicine is not limited to the care of the senile.

"The most critical decades are those between forty and sixty, for much more can be accomplished for the aging than for those already aged," said Dr. Stieglitz.

We need only to review what we already have observed about heart disease, cancer, arthritis, diabetes, and other dis­eases to realize that people live longer now because we know how to fight the diseases that used to kill people when they were young.

Unfortunately these very advancements in medicine occa­sionally seem to almost defeat themselves. When once a man might have died from a disease, he may now be saved, but as a chronic invalid. Many times, the miracles of modern medi­cine may keep alive a person in a prolonged invalidism that may be a greater tragedy than a quick death would be.

One of the great objectives of those working in geriatrics is to assure longevity with health. The more we learn about preventing disease, and in curing it, the more we can hope that the extended span of life may be a much happier and healthier one.

A great deal of attention already is being directed toward the socioeconomic factors: employment for older persons, education, housing, health, and all the phases of living that bear significance for a group that is growing in number year by year.

Medically, the work continues with great energy. Hand in hand with psychiatric and psychological developments in this area of treatment, the new drugs are finding a place among the aged.

Steroids are promising much. Injections of hormones may help in keeping people "young," healthy, and active.

The story of man's effort to assure or restore sexual potency through the use of "monkey glands" and other "rejuvenators" and "youth restorers" is fairly well known.

It began back in 1849 when Arnold Adolf Berthold, a German physiologist, transplanted rooster testicles into the bellies of capons and changed them back into fighting roost­ers. This was the first scientific proof that testicles produce a substance that influences sexual characteristics. This sub­stance is the male hormone.

For the next three-quarters of a century a large number of quacks and some misinformed doctors offered and advocated a variety of mashed animal testicles and transplanted glands to persons seeking rejuvenation. According to reliable sources the only results of these transplants and injections were psy­chological.

Then, in 1927, Professor Fred C. Koch of the University of Chicago and a medical-student assistant, Lemual C. Mc-Gee, isolated the testicular hormone—testosterone—which they produced from bull gonads.

This was to really open the door to experimentation in steroids. Since then hormones have been used in a great num­ber of ways. Millions of dollars are being spent in studies dealing with geriatrics and scientists are generally predicting that new developments in the steroid-hormone field eventually will make the later years well worth living.

Enzymes promise much in sustaining vigor in old age.

Meanwhile, doctors point out that the ravages of chronic illness that may cause much misery in later life generally have their beginnings in middle age or earlier.

Consequently it behooves everyone to watch his health closely, especially after middle life is reached, to insure as good health as possible for the many years ahead that most of us now may expect.

Important research and experiments are constantly being conducted in the fields of psychiatry and psychology pertain­ing to the oldsters.

John A. Schindler in How To Live 365 Days A Year describes how degenerative processes in the aging can be the result of emotional stress and how these degenerative diseases were reversed in the San Francisco Municipal Home for the Aged largely by giving them something to do—tasks, jobs, and responsibilities.

The vast scope of such studies may be better appreciated when we realize that a 939-page volume entitled Handbook of Aging and the Individual was released recently by the Uni­versity of Chicago Press.

The handbook was edited by Dr. James E. Birren, psy­chologist and chief of the section on aging at the National Institute of Mental Health at Bethesda, Md. Twenty-eight scientists and scholars contributed to the manual.

From studies such as these we glean the information that it is entirely possible that within 25 years, those persons who are 75 years old will have the biological age of the 65-year-old persons of today because they will have been subjected to fewer diseases during their lifetimes.

In relation to this, it may also be pointed out that very few persons really die of old age. Usually death comes from some other cause associated with the breakdown of vital processes, such as the cardiovascular system which today kills most of our elderly persons.

Step by step, development by development, the progress to­ward healthful old age goes on with new successes each year. This can only result in more older people. Population experts now believe that by 1980 there will be 30 million persons in the nation who are 65 or over.

Obviously, therefore, planning and preparation must be started now. New medical plans for the elderly already are in the news, along with governmental recognition that re­sulted in legislation in 1960.

How to make certain that we shall gain old age with good health?

There are various answers, and contributing suggestions.

Dr. Morris Fishbein of Chicago says: "To live a long time, don't raise your voice. By speaking in a calm tone you avoid stress, one of the causes of aging."

Keeping busy, even after retirement, is important to good health in old age.

A gray-haired doctor, Ross Carney, M. D., listened to an elderly, energetic-appearing man complain about a series of small disorders. The doctor had just finished examining Ken Quimby, 68, and knew that nothing was really very wrong with him.

"How busy are you?" the doctor suddenly asked.

"How busy? You know how busy I am! I'm not, damn it."

"You used to run a good sales organization, Ken."

"That's right."

"So maybe you'd better get back into action."

"I'm retired. Have you forgotten?"

"You're also bored. That's all that is wrong with you. I'm going to put you to work."

"Who'd hire me, even if I wanted a job again? I don't see—"

"The United Fund needs some help in setting up their field force for solicitations. Right down your alley. What about it?"

"Hmmm. Say! I could help."

Ken Quimby not only could but did, to the extent that the following year he headed up the city-wide campaign for funds. Meanwhile, his physical discomforts, aches, pains, and indispositions seemed to vanish.

The American Medical Association suggests seven rules if you want to stay young in spirit, body, and mind:

1.   See your doctor regularly. He can diagnose and treat almost any disease if he finds it early enough.

2.   Watch your diet. No one can feel young and peppy when he is toting an extra load of weight.

3.   Get adequate rest for both mind and body.

4.   Pursue physical exercise.

5.   Fill your days with productivity. The quickest way to old age is through boredom.

6.   Partake in community affairs.

7.   Prepare for future financial needs.

Dr. Edward Henderson, one of the nation's authorities on aging, in 1959 predicted that in 25 years alert centenarians will be plentiful. "If a person gets enough rest and sleep, eats sensibly, doesn't get angry too often, does good for other people and keeps interested and active in life around him," Dr. Henderson suggested, in close agreement with the AMA suggestions above, "he has a good chance of staying around long enough to see most of the killer diseases wiped out."

Dr. C. Ward Crampton, formerly Associate Professor of Medicine at the New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital is credited with observing that a 60-year-old man may have a 40-year-old heart, 50-year-old kidneys, and an 80-year-old liver. The body does not age uniformly.

The theory that a human being has just so much life in him is being medically discarded by gerontologists. It is pointed out that Dr. Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize-winning biologist, kept cells and organs living in nutritive solutions indefinitely.

Consequently there is a possibility of stopping or turning back the aging process. Evidently, under proper conditions, cells and organs can keep on living.

In California, scientists at the University of California have lengthened the span of life for laboratory animals with chemicals; in the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, by radiation.

At the Bjorksten Research Foundation in Madison, Wis­consin, Dr. Johan Bjorksten's research has given evidence that we may grow old because protein molecules in our bodies become "handcuffed" and prevented from functioning freely. Research may develop drugs to convert protein into active, healthy tissue. Some progress has been made in this area.

In Switzerland, Dr. Paul Niehans has caused a good deal of controversy through his cellular therapy ("CT") in which the patient is injected with still-living animal cells which sup­posedly manufacture hormones necessary to life. Experimen­tation in this field still is being carried on, with enthusiastic reports on its success from a good many sources. The late Pope Pius XII was said to have been a patient of Dr. Niehans.

One controversy in geriatrics was created, to a large ex­tent, by Dr. Anna Asian of Rumania. Back in 1949 while treating older persons for hardening of arteries and arthritis, Dr. Asian believed that she found an improvement in mem­ory, hearing, and eyesight among her patients. Rather than attributing the improvements to a betterment in general health, she put her faith in a drug she was using and began a large treatment program.

The Rumanian Communist government set up the Parhon Institute of Geriatrics in Bucharest where Dr. Asian treated 7600 patients, 62 to 92.

The drug she used was procaine, more frequently known in this country as Novocain, and in use for many years. She called it H3 and described it as having "vitaminlike" effects. Consequently the drug was mistakenly called "Vitamin H3" in many places, although there is no such vitamin. (For the benefits derived from vitamins see Chapter 23.)

In 1959 the British Medical Journal reported that Dr. As­ian's "published papers and her recent lectures in London fail to disclose any scientifically valid evidence in support of her conclusions."

The idea was further discredited when, in 1960, Dr. Leo Gitman reported for a Brooklyn research team that a careful scientific study, in which one group received procaine injec­tions and another got exactly the same care and food, but no procaine, revealed no differences that could unequivocally be attributed to procaine.

Dr. Osias Leon Friedman of Manhattan defended the treat­ment, saying that the Brooklyn doctors were not using the right kind of procaine. Dr. Gitman replied that Dr. Asian re­fused to sell hers to them.

Dr. Nathan Shock of the U. S. National Institutes of Health is reported in Time Magazine, Aug. 22, 1960, to have remarked: "If these claims for procaine were true, you'd be adding ten years to your life every time your dentist fills a tooth. This woman is the Pied Piper of 1960, leading the aged instead of the young."

Another interesting and logical-sounding theory has come in recent years from Dr. J. W. Still of the George Washington School of Medicine. The doctor explains that he believes death may be a matter of bad co-ordination and poor timing. The body's regulatory mechanism is controlled by the nervous-endocrine system. The nervous system co-ordinates and con­trols all the body's other systems and organs, while endocrine or ductless glands secrete horomones into the blood stream to stimulate the organism into activity.

Likening it to a headquarters, messages are constantly be­ing received from the rest of the body, being correlated, and instructions are being sent out to the various body parts. These commands control the functions that make us live: pulse rate, blood pressure, gland secretions, everything else. Obviously if something goes wrong in this complex of func­tioning, trouble ensues and the body shows the results.

Dr. Still has asked if aging itself might not be simply an­other disease which can be studied, fought, and ultimately conquered.

Whatever the answers, many gerontologists do agree that a race of 150-year-olds one day will be a reality.

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