TOO RAPID MATURATION IN CHILDREN 

 AS A CAUSE OF AGEING 



H. M. Sinclair, d.m., m.r.c.p. 



Laboratory of Human Nutrition, University of Oxford. 



My great-grandfather, Sir John Sinclair, who was founder 

 and first President of the Board of Agriculture and who for 

 better or for worse introduced the word "statistics" into our 

 language, had a passion for codifying knowledge. He re- 

 gretted, even in 1807, the large number of printed books and 

 papers, although it is only fair to add that he was himself 

 responsible for 122 volumes: "Such immense masses of 

 printed paper can answer no good purpose, and are a heavy 

 load upon literature and the acquisition of useful knowledge" 

 (Sinclair, 1807). In his four- volume "Code of Health and 

 Longevity" (1807) he gathered together a mass of informa- 

 tion relating to the attainment of old age, and in this diet 

 played a conspicuous part. Dr. Clive McCay has done likewise 

 in a number of important publications, but unlike my great- 

 grandfather, he has supplemented his researches with 

 experiments upon lower animals, from cockroaches to dogs. 

 Of course others had earlier concluded that a sparse diet 

 prolonged life. The Venetian nobleman, Luigi Cornaro (1558) 

 and the Miller of Essex were driven by bad health to adopt a 

 simple diet, but that great pioneer of experimental human 

 nutrition, William Stark, concluded (1788) that they "were 

 driven to temperance as their last resource" and "the proba- 

 bility is that nothing but the dread of former sufferings could 

 have given them resolution to persevere in so strict a course 

 of abstinence". 



We are all thoroughly familiar with the evidence that over- 

 nutrition and obesity tend to shorten life; this has been 

 demonstrated for such different organisms as man, rats, trout, 



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