Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 / Volume 1, Number 1

by Unknown

In accordance with the doctrine of influx and in accordance with the functions of the brain we are compelled to recognize health and longevity as more closely associated with the higher than the lower faculties,—the moral rather than the animal nature. This is the reason that woman, with a feebler body but a stronger moral nature, ranks higher in health and longevity than man; and although from four to sixteen per cent more males are born, women are generally in predominance, often from two to six per cent. The researches of the Bureau of Statistics of Vienna show that about one third more women than men reach an advanced age. De Verga asserts that of sudden deaths there are about 100 women to 780 men. The inevitable inference is that the cultivation of virtue or religion is the surest road to longevity, and the indulgence in vice and crime the most certain ruin to the body and soul.

There is a curious illustration of these principles in the evidence of life insurance companies in reference to spirit drinking and abstinence. The oldest two life insurance companies of England, the General Provident and the United Kingdom, have made records for forty-five years which distinguish the total abstainers and the moderate drinkers. Drunkards they do not insure at all. The care with which lives are selected for insurance results in a smaller rate of mortality among the insured than in the entire population. This gain was but slight among those classed as moderate drinkers, for their mortality was only three per cent less than the average mortality; but among the total abstainers it was thirty-one per cent less. Thus the proportion of deaths among moderate drinkers compared to that of total abstainers is as 97 to 69.

The temperance advocate would assume that this was owing entirely to the deleterious effects of alcohol, and that is partially true; but there is a deeper reason in the difference of the two classes of men. The man in whom the appetites are well controlled by the higher energies of his nature, and who has therefore no inclination to gluttony or drunkenness, has a better organization for health and longevity than he in whom the appetites have greater relative power, and who seeks the stimulus of alcohol to relieve his nervous depression. The inability or unwillingness to live without stimulation is a mark of weakness, which is an impairment of health; and this weakness predisposes to excessive and irregular indulgence, though it may not go so far as intoxication.

The effects of marriage furnish a parallel illustration. It is well-known that bachelors are more short lived than married men, but this is not owing entirely to the hygienic influence of marriage. It is partly owing to the inferiority of bachelors as a class. The men who remain celibate are either too inferior personally to win the regard of women, or are generally deficient in the strong affections which seek a conjugal life, and the energies which make them fearless of its responsibilities and burdens. Evidently they have not as a class the robust energies of the marrying men, and the urgent motives to compel them to regular industry and prudence. Everything which stimulates men to exercise the nobler qualities of their nature is promotive of health and longevity; and the true religion which anthropology commends will increase human longevity in proportion as it prevails.

In future numbers the true basis and indications of longevity in man will be fully illustrated.

The attainable limits of human longevity are generally underrated by the medical profession and by popular opinion. Instead of the Scriptural limit of threescore and ten I would estimate twice that amount, or 140 years, as the ideal age of healthy longevity, when mankind shall have been bred and trained with the same wise energy that has been expended on horses and cattle. Of the present scrub race, a very large number ought never to have been born, and ought not to be allowed to transmit their physical and moral deficiencies to posterity.

The estimate of 140 years as a practicable longevity for a nobler generation is sustained by the number of that age (fourteen, if I recollect rightly) found in Italy by a census under one of the later Roman emperors. But for the race now on the globe a more applicable estimate is that of the European scientist, that the normal longevity of an animal is five times its period of growth,—a rule which gives the camel forty years, the horse twenty-five, the lion twenty, the dog ten, the rabbit five. By this calculation man’s twenty years of growth indicate 100. But growth is not limited to twenty, and if we extend the period of maturing to twenty-eight, the same rule would give us 140 as an age for the best specimens of humanity, which has been attained in rare cases, its general possibility in improved conditions being thus demonstrated.

There are many fine examples of longevity at this time. The famous French chemist Chevreul has just completed his hundredth year at Paris, in the full vigor of his intellect.

The Novosti, a Russian journal, recently mentions the death in the almshouse of St. Petersburg of a man aged 122 years, whose mental faculties were preserved up to his death, and who had excellent health to the age of 118.

We have similar examples in the United States. Mrs. Celia Monroe, a colored woman, who died a few weeks ago at Kansas City was believed to be 125. She was going about a few days before her death.