96 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



to live to six times that age, or to ninety-six years. Having been 

 called upon to account for the phenomenal ages attributed by the 

 Bible to the patriarchs, he risked the following as an explanation : 

 " Before the flood, the earth was less solid, less compact, than it is 

 now. The law of gravitation had acted for only a little time ; the 

 productions of the globe had less consistency, and the body of man, 

 being more supple, was more susceptible of extension. Being able to 

 grow for a longer time, it should, in consequence, live for a longer 

 time than now." 



The German Heusler has suggested on the same point that the an- 

 cients did not divide time as we do. Previous to the age of Abraham, 

 the year, among some people of the East, was only three months, or a 

 season ; so that they had a year of spring, one of summer, one of fall, 

 and one of winter. The year was extended so as to consist of eight 

 months after Abraham, and of twelve months after Joseph. Voltaire 

 rejected the longevity assigned to the patriarchs of the Bible, but ac- 

 cepted without question the stories of the great ages attained by some 

 men in India, where, he says, " it is not rare to see old men of one 

 hundred and twenty years." The eminent French physiologist, Flou- 

 rens, fixing the complete development of man at twenty years, teaches 

 that he should live five times as long as it takes him to become an 

 adult. According to this author, the moment of a completed develop- 

 ment may be recognized by the fact of the junction of the bones with 

 their apophyses. This junction takes place in horses at five years, and 

 the horse does not live beyond twenty-five years ; with the ox, at four 

 years, and it does not live over twenty years ; with the cat at eighteen 

 months, and that animal rarely lives over ten years. With man, it is 

 effected at twenty years, and he only exceptionally lives beyond one 

 hundred years. The same physiologist admits, however, that human 

 life may be exceptionally prolonged under certain conditions of com- 

 fort, sobriety, freedom from care, regularity of habits, and observance 

 of the rules of hygiene ; and he terminates his interesting study of 

 the last point (" De la Longuvite humaine ") with the aphorism, " Man 

 kills himself rather than dies." 



Another physiologist, Dr. Huferand, wrote in 1841 in the " Journal 

 de la Societe de Statistique universelle " : "There is nothing to pre- 

 vent our considerinsc the most remote terms which the known exam- 

 pies of longevity offer to us as forming the extreme limit of human 

 life, or as the ideal of perfection, as a model, finally, of what the nat- 

 ure of man is capable of under favorable circumstances. Experience 

 attests that one may live to one hundred and fifty and even to one 

 hundred and sixty years. More than this, the autopsy of Thomas 

 Parr, who died at one hundred and fifty-two years, which showed that 

 all his viscera Avere perfectly sound, proves that he might have lived 

 still longer, if the new kind of life that he led in consequence of a 

 change in his conditions of existence had not determined a mortal 



