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

  • Gardner, John, 1804-1880.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    17/224 (page 5)
    If these observations and inference are on the whole well founded, a slight modification must be admitted, since it is highly probable that the time of perfect maturity of growth is not an absolutely fixed, but a variable quantity, some individuals attaining it somewhat earlier, some later. It would perhaps be safe to assume that the body has reached its full development and maturity from eighteen to twenty-one. These numbers multiplied by five, would bring the natural life of man to be from ninety to one hundred and five years. This conclusion must, we think, be regarded as the truth, or at least a very close approximation to the truth,—the discovery of a most interesting and important natural fact, or law. The inference necessarily follows, that all per- sons who die under eighty years of age, many who die under ninety, some who die under one hundred or even under one hundred and five, die prematurely. (See Note C, p. 153.) And this inference is supported by observations made in another direction; for all pathologists agree in stating that very few persons indeed