THE CONDITION OF OLD AGE 23 



the nature of senility, of old age, could best be ex- 

 pressed in a single word, atrophy. " On resume* la 

 senilite par un seul mot: atrophie." 1 That is his 

 estimate of old age. But that is not the only es- 

 timate of old age which has been made up to the 

 present time. We find one, which is much more 

 prevalent, is that which connects it with the condition 

 of the arteries. Indeed, Professor Osier has written 

 this sentence : " Longevity is a vascular question, and 

 has been well expressed in the axiom that a man is 

 only as old as his arteries." 2 Now these are medical 

 views, not biological, and you will find that there is a 

 very extensive literature dealing with old age in man 

 based upon the conception that old age is a kind of 

 disease, a chronic disease, an incurable disease. Medi- 

 cal writers have put forward various conceptions giv- 

 ing a medical interpretation of this disease. That to 

 which I just referred is the favourite one, the one 

 you are most likely to hear from physicians to-day 

 namely, the theory of arterial sclerosis, that the hard- 

 ening of the walls of the arteries is the primary thing ; 

 it interferes with the circulation, the bad circulation 

 interferes with the proper working of every part of 

 the body, and as the circulation becomes impeded, 

 various accessory results are produced in the body in 

 consequence. The body is brought to a lower or 

 more diseased condition than before. Hence many 

 medical writers interpret sclerosis of the arteries as 



1 L'Anne"e biologique, Tome III., p. 256, 1897. 



* W. Osier, The Principles and Practice of Medicine, 1892, p. 666. 



