THE DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE. 97 



plethora in him. There is, then, nothing improbable in the affirmation 

 that the organization of man may endure and his vital force act during 

 two centuries." Dr. Berthelot, adopting the doctrine that the dura- 

 tion of human life is proportioned to the time required for reaching 

 maturity, cites as a well-known fact that the traveler Delahaye, who 

 was born with a robust constitution and led a regular life, was not 

 matured till long after the common time, married and became a father 

 at seventy, and lived till he was a hundred and twenty years old. ' 



The German physiologists have paid the greatest attention to this 

 subject. Haller maintained that man might live to two hundred years. 

 Hufeland, in his " Art of prolonging Life," teaches that the age of the 

 world has to this day had no influence on the duration of human life, 

 and that it may be prolonged to the length of the lives of the patri- 

 archs computed according to the actual divisions of time ; assuming 

 that the animal lives eight times as long as it takes it to reach matu- 

 rity, he calculates that man becoming an adult at twenty-five years, 

 should live to be two hundred years old. This opinion is shared by 

 Professor Karup, Dr. Buschner, of Darmstadt, and others who have 

 written with reference to life insurance. Dr. Gardner, an English 

 physiologist, has also published a work on the means of prolonging life, 

 and has likewise adopted the doctrine of a ratio of the whole duration 

 to the period required for full development. He believes, however, 

 that the latter period is not fixed, but that it varies from eighteen to 

 twenty-one years, and consequently the whole length of life should be 

 between ninety and one hundred and five years. But he does not 

 hesitate to affirm that the latter age has never been passed, if it has 

 been reached. Sir George Cornewall Lewis is still more skeptical, and 

 does not believe that the existence even of a centenarian can be de- 

 monstrated. Mr. J. Thomes, in " Notes and Queries," while he contests 

 ultra-centenarianism as impossible, cites as entirely authentic the fact 

 of a client of an English life-assurance company having died in 1879, 

 at the proved age of one hundred and two years and some months. 

 But this case, he adds, " is the only one which an open inquiry among 

 the oldest life-assurance companies of England has brought to light." 

 According to Mr. Thompson, however (" Curiosities of Longevity "), 

 nothing decisive is involved in the extreme rarity of centenarians in 

 the annals of insurance companies, for the highest ages are found in 

 the lower classes of society, and notably among agriculturists, who do 

 not insure their lives. 



So far as to doctrines ; we now come to examine the facts. In 

 this we must exercise considerable restraint, for the data we have per- 

 sonally gathered and those which we have found in books, memoirs, 

 medical dictionaries, etc., form a considerable collection, the reproduc- 

 tion of which would require a volume ; we shall have to make a very 

 limited choice from among the numerous documents. 



The ancient Greek writers, especially Lucian, have left biographi- 

 TOL. xx. 7 



