2 AGE, GROWTH, AND DEATH 



one who had title to be considered as a scientific 

 writer upon the subject. Longevity is indeed a 

 strange and difficult problem. Many of you doubt- 

 less have had your attention directed recently to the 

 republished translation of Cornaro's famous work 1 

 and know how sensible that is, and as you read it you 

 must have perceived how little in the practical aspect 

 of the matter we have passed beyond the advice 

 which old Cornaro gave to us, and yet silently in the 

 medical laboratories, and in the physiological and 

 anatomical institutes of various universities, we have 

 been gathering more accurate information as to what 

 is the condition of persons who are very old. 2 



We know, first of all, from our common observation, 

 that the very old grow shorter in stature. We see that 

 they are not so tall as in the prime of life. The fig- 

 ures which have been compiled upon this subject are 

 instructive, for they show that at the age of some 

 thirty years the average height of men these figures 

 refer to Germans is 174 centimetres. It remains at 

 that, however, only for a short period ; then it decreases 



1 Luigi Cornaro's work was originally published at Padua in 1558 under the 

 title of Traltato de la vita sobria. English editions have been issued by 

 George Herbert, by an anonymous editor (London, 1768), and G. H. Evans 

 (1836), all which included other "discourses." The translation alluded to in 

 the text was issued at Milwaukee in 1903 by Wm. F. Butler, and in the same 

 volume the reader will find more apposite matter. Cornaro was born in 1464 

 and died in 1566. " He resigned his last breath without any agony, sitting in 

 an elbow chair, being above an hundred years old." 



2 Addison, in the Spectator (Oct. 13, 1711), wrote of Cornaro and thus com- 

 mends him : "The 'Treatise' I mention has been taken notice of by several 

 eminent authors, and is written with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion, and 

 good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance and sobriety." 



