24 BIOLOGY OF DEATH 



say 15. By an oversight his death was not registered. 

 In the same year that he died another male child was 

 born to the same parents, and given the name of John 

 Smith, in commemoration perhaps of his deceased brother. 

 This second John Smith was never baptized. He at- 

 tained the age of 85 years, and then because of the appear- 

 ance of extreme senility which he presented* his stated age 

 increased by leaps and bounds. A study of the baptismal 

 records of the town disclosed the apparent fact that he 

 was just 100 years old. The case goes out to the public 

 as an unusually well authenticated case of centenarianism, 

 when of course it is nothing of the sort. 



Young applies vigorously the criteria above enumer- 

 ated first, to the historically recorded cases of great long- 

 evity such as Thomas Parr, et id genus omne, and rejects 

 them all; and second to the total mortality experience 

 of all the Life Assurance and Annuity Societies of Great 

 Britain and the annuity experience of the National Debt 

 Office. The number of persons included in the experience 

 was close upon a million. He found in this material, and 

 from other outside evidence, exactly 30 persons who lived 

 100 or more years. In Table 2 the detailed results of 

 his inquiry are shown in condensed form. 



It will be noted from this table that the most extreme 

 case of longevity which Young was able to authenticate 

 was about a month and a half short of 111 years. Of 

 the 30 centenarians recorded 21 were women and 9 were 

 men. The superiority of women in expectation of life is 

 strikingly apparent at the very high age of 100 years. We 

 shall later see that this is merely a particularly noteworthy 

 instance of a phenomenon which is common to a great- 

 portion of the life span. 



