PROBLEM OF AGE, GROWTH 

 AND DEATH 



THE CONDITION OF OLD AGE 



THE subject of age has ever been one which has 

 attracted human thought. It leads us so near 

 to the great mysteries that all thinkers have contem- 

 plated it, and many are the writers who from the 

 literary point of view have presented us, sometimes 

 with profound thought, often with beautiful images 

 connected with the change from youth to old age. 

 We need but to think of two books familiar more or 

 less to us all that ancient classic, Cicero's De Senec- 

 tute, the great book on age, one might almost say, 

 from the literary standpoint, and that of our own 

 fellow-citizen, my former teacher and professor at the 

 Medical School, Dr. Holmes, who in his delightful 

 Autocrat offers to us some of his charming specula- 

 tions upon age. From the time of Cicero to the time 

 of Holmes numerous authors have written on old 

 age, yet among them all we shall scarcely find any 



