Longevity : the means of prolonging life after middle age / by John Gardner.

  • John Gardner
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Longevity : the means of prolonging life after middle age / by John Gardner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and relations of things around us, we are able to form more rational aims, and to pursue them with better hopes of success. How to evade the causes of disease, to obviate their effects when they touch us, how to reach the utmost extent of the term allotted to human exist- ence are legitimate objects of research. And since the most subtle and most tremendous physical forces are made subservient to our daily wants, and the composition and interaction of the materials of our earth, animate and inanimate, are to some extent ascertained and utilised, surely we may expect that means and appliances should be attainable to preserve and prolong human life, to render longevity the rule for many, and not, as now, the exceptional lot of a few. In this line of thought a question emerges which we must meet and answer in limine. How long can men live if exempted or pro- tected from all the influences tending to extinguish life prematurely ? What is the term, if any, which Divine Providence has affixed to the du- ration of human life ? As an obvious fact, numbers reach the age of
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