The Biology of Senescence 



Sanderson, 1949) is particularly striking. In primitive cultures 

 'important means of security for old people are their active 

 association with others and assistance in their interests and 

 enterprises. They are regarded as repositories of knowledge, 

 imparters of valuable information, and mediators between their 

 fellows and the fearful supernatural powers . . . The proportion 

 of the old who remain active, productive, and essential in 

 primitive societies is much higher than in advanced civilization, 

 for they succeed to an amazing degree in providing cultural 

 conditions which utilize the services of their few old people' 

 (Simmonds, 1946). How little this applies to our own culture 

 is evident from the studies of Sheldon (1949); other evidence 

 suggests that although in certain groups (Lehman, 1943), such 

 as amateur naturalists — or among those who retain, perhaps, 

 some of the magico-social functions of the primitive elder (poli- 

 ticians, judges and clergy) the element of social support based 

 upon continued activity leads to an apparently superior reten- 

 tion of the capacity for public life, the society of compulsory 

 retirement, individual privacy and the small family has little 

 to offer to old people. This is a topic which cannot be pursued 

 here, but its importance in the social medicine of age is para- 

 mount at present. 



The problem of medical gerontology at the biological level, 

 however, is to prolong the human life cycle in time, either by 

 deformation and stretching or by addition, and in particular to 

 prolong that part of it which contains the period of 'adult 

 vigour'. Such a problem could theoretically be solved in any of 

 three ways, bearing in mind the evidence regarding the exist- 

 ence of a developmental 'programme' — that programme could 

 be prolonged by the provision of new developmental operations; 

 or its movement, throughout or in part, could be slowed down; 

 or active life could be maintained after the expiry of the pro- 

 gramme by piecemeal adjustment of homoestatic mechanisms 

 with supplements, medicaments and prostheses of various kinds. 



The first of these possibilities, though it is biologically the 

 most interesting, does not merit discussion at present, at any 

 rate in relation to man. We do not know enough about morpho- 

 genesis to interfere with it clinically, except in a few simple 

 deficiency states, let alone devise and apply a sequence of self- 



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