Senescence, the Last Half of Life

by G. Stanley Hall

Utecht, like Colonel Smith, has collected data about many people who have reached the age of 100, some of whom he photographs. He believes man not only lives longer but is more vital than formerly. He seems to accept without proof that a Montana Indian lived to be 134; an Oregon woman, 120; and a Mrs. Kilcrease of Texas, 136. He tells us of one Arkansas woman who reached 112 years, keeping a large garden almost to the end of her life, who at the above age walked six miles and back to see her great-great-granddaughter married. She claimed her age was due to clean, honest living, plenty of work, a desire to help, keeping busy, and caring for others. A. Goodwin of Alabama (106) walks five miles a day and works several hours in his garden. He eats what he likes, reads without glasses, and is the head of one of the largest families in the country, their reunions being attended by more than eight hundred persons. He had been a hunter and still uses his rifle and ascribes his longevity to interest in out-of-door sports as a young man. He has been so busy he can hardly realize he is old, wants fifty years more of life if possible and feels that he is going to have it. He has been temperate, sleeps much and regularly, and has a horror of worry. Mrs. Mary Harrison of Michigan celebrated her hundredth anniversary and did not seem as tired as any of her two hundred guests. She had been a humorist and would never look on the dark side of things. An Ohio lady of 91 who has been devoted to a motorcycle cannot bring herself to give up her joyrides, although she now has a young man to guide the wheel. She has always lived in the country and worked hard and ascribes her longevity chiefly to her rides.

Utecht has collected perhaps two-score more instances of people well over ninety and concludes that all of them were, in their prime, more or less athletic—at least none were weaklings. He thinks the longest-lived people are average men and women who have a good hygienic sense. None were intemperate, few were highly educated, and most were inured to hardships and even drudgery in youth, so that the study of all their lives practically tells the same story of simple life in the free air, with enough but not too much work and with exemption, for the most part, from worry.

It would be interesting to know if a more critical study of the actual age of many of these and other quoted centenarians would substantiate their claims. No such investigation, however, has ever been made into the many cases reported by this and the preceding author.

I append a few special records that seem peculiarly challenging. The first is that of James L. Smith,[83] a veteran of the Civil War. Twenty years ago he weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, was warned against excitement, and his friends and physician were horrified when he proceeded to run his flesh off. It was a great effort for so heavy a man but in six months he had reduced his weight to one hundred and ninety and was running more than six miles a day, his daily work being the directing of two hundred district messengers. Yielding to the protests of his friends he ceased his exercise, because he was told that he could not punish his heart and lungs thus and not suffer and was liable to drop dead. Growing fleshy again, with increased shortness of breath, he began to run again daily, reducing his weight once more to a hundred and sixty and developing a physique and complexion like that of a far younger man. At seventy he ran never less than five and often ten miles a day, holding that senility is a disease of the mind and that youth and its vigor can be maintained if one only believes in himself. He has raced in many parts of the country and has a standing offer to run any ten survivors of the Civil War in relays of one to a mile, he himself running the whole ten. His offer used to be accepted; it is so no longer. The day he was seventy he “covered a half mile faster than a roller-skating champion,” and at seventy-three ran half a mile in 2 minutes and 44 seconds. On a dirt road he has run ten miles in 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 48 seconds, exactly the same time in which he ran the same distance in the Grand Army marathon at Los Angeles six years before, and says that he finished in fine condition.

Still more interesting, although perhaps not more authentic, is the autobiographic record of Sanford Bennett.[84] At the age of fifty he was broken in health and had to give up his position because of a feeble heart and dyspeptic stomach. After trying various cures he, like Smith, developed one of his own, consisting chiefly of very manifold exercises taken, for the most part, in a recumbent position to lessen the arterial strain upon his weak heart, and with little and finally no apparatus. By persistent adherence to this regimen the circulatory and digestive functions were slowly recuperated and his muscles underwent remarkable development in bulk and power. Many photographs of himself, with only a breech-waist, show him to have acquired a symmetry and fulness of physical development of which any young athlete might well be proud. Under self-massage wrinkles of face and neck disappeared, the growth of the hair on his head was somewhat increased, and its grayness was more or less modified. His spirits and the courage with which he faced life and reëntered business showed a rejuvenation of mind and feelings no less remarkable than that of the body. By more or less systematic methods he strengthened his eyes; improved the condition of his liver and kidneys; freshened the skin; greatly bettered the varicosities (photographed) of the veins of his legs; and materially improved the action of his heart, all the while recognizing the influences of the unconscious mind upon his physical condition. He has entirely overcome his tendency to adiposity, strengthened his voice, increased the girth of his chest and his respiratory capacity, etc.

It is impossible to con this book and its untouched photographs without the conviction, which has been strengthened by my own correspondence with the author, that he has undergone a remarkable physical transformation. We have already enough such instances to suggest that senescence normally releases in healthy natures new motivations for the conservation of health and that if these are given their due expression and if all aging men and women came to realize that as the decline of life sets in they must be, more and more, not only their own hygienists but their own physicians, far more might be accomplished in many if not most cases than the world at present suspects.

This suggests the lesson that Charles Francis[85] has drawn from his life, namely, that exercise is the chief cause of his vigor at seventy. His life in connection with his vocation as a printer has been extremely active and arduous and he ascribes his present condition to athletics and his exceptional fondness for dancing. He insists that next to this comes the avoidance of worry and thinks that every normal old man develops a more or less full creed of hygienic Do’s and Don’ts. Charles Cliff thinks the way to eighty is to work hard in youth and then gradually take it easy.

Many modern writers, like Cicero’s Cato, ascribe great efficacy to the accumulated examples of old men who have achieved exceptional success late in life, not only in business, arts, and letters but in the greatest art of all, that of conserving health and youth. We can easily conceive of a new temple of fame to immortalize those who have mastered the art of deferring senility and death.

Captain G. E. D. Diamond[86] claimed to be 103 and in his book tells us how he lived—no sweets, meats, stimulants, tobacco, tea, or coffee; had never married; found a panacea in olive oil taken internally and with which he once or twice daily rubbed his body; found great virtue in a cup of hot water at breakfast, grapefruit at luncheon, bread buttered with olive oil; used milk, and fish. He discants at length upon the kinds, purity, and mode of application of his panacea and is a polemic vegetarian.

The late Cardinal Gibbons[87] thinks no one ever died of hard work and says that he almost never had an idle moment. He forced himself to lie in bed at least eight hours and did not worry if he did not fall asleep. The foundations of health are laid in youth and he laid the greatest stress upon plenty of regular exercise suitable to one’s age, moderation in eating and drinking, plenty of sleep, an occupation, and avoidance of worry.