NATURAL DEATH AND THE DURATION 

 OF LIFE 



BY 



JACQUES LOEB 

 The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research 



I 



THE efforts to prolong life have resulted in a diminu- 

 tion of the chances of premature death. Nations with 

 adequately developed facilities for medical research and 

 an efficient public health service have practically elimi- 

 nated smallpox and typhoid, yellow fever and malaria, 

 and have conquered rabies, diphtheria, tetanus, and cere- 

 brospinal meningitis. If this development continues to 

 receive the support it deserves, the time is bound to come 

 when each human being can be guaranteed with a fair 

 degree of probability a full duration of life. But why 

 must we die ? 



The French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century 

 defined life as that which resists death. What they meant 

 by this definition was the fact that as soon as death sets 

 in, the body begins to disintegrate. They argued cor- 

 rectly that the forces of disintegration were inherent in 

 the living body but were held in check during life. Re- 

 cent progress in physical chemistry permits us to state 

 that the spontaneous disintegration of the body which 

 sets in with death (at the proper temperature and proper 

 degree of moisture) is a process of digestion, comparable 



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