Old age; the results of information received respecting nearly nine hundred persons who had attained the age of eighty years : including seventy-four centenarians.

  • Humphry, George Murray, Sir, 1820-1896.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Old age; the results of information received respecting nearly nine hundred persons who had attained the age of eighty years : including seventy-four centenarians. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    and issued a form, with a memorandum, for the purpose of collecting information of various kinds respecting the condition, habits, etc., past and present, of persons who had attained to advanced age. The minimum age for the subjects of inquiry was fixed at 80. We are indebted to many members of the profession, and to some others, for the returns they have taken the trouble to make, which at the present exceed 500 \ the number of males and of females being nearly equal. These have been, in part, carefully tabulated and analysed by myself, with the aid of my friend and assistant, Mr A. Francis. It is not to be supposed that from this, or other investigations of the like kind, any very startling results will be ob- tained ; for the hill of knowledge is mounted with slow and laborious steps; and we must be content to advance little by little. Moreover, I do not propose to weary you with many of the details of this inquiry, w^hich, I may observe, is not yet completed, but to make a few remarks upon the subject of old age, which will be to some extent based upon information derived from the inquiry just mentioned. We are, I think, too much accustomed in our ideas to limit the work of development to the periods of adolescence and maturity; and, indeed, the surpassing wonders of that work — I say surpassing wonders, for, ^ They are now nearly 900,