use of his vital reserves, to save himself from deatli. I'his orientation is of 

 considerable importance in the development of Russian thanatology and in 

 general medical practice. 



In 1945, a monograph appeared by Z. G. Frenkel' entitled "Prolongation 

 of life and active old age." On the basis of a large amount of statistical material, 

 this monograph sheds light on the problems of the social-economic prerequisites 

 of longevity and of the preservation of good spirits and health even in extreme 

 old age. Frenkel's characterizes the orientation of his investigations in the fol- 

 lowing fashion : 



"Whereas other studies of old age and longevity usually take up and 

 investigate from the biological viewpoint the nature and course of the aging 

 processes in the organism, their physiology and pathology, I have set myself 

 the task, in this book, of considering and clarifying the significance of the prob- 

 lem of old age in the total complex of the social-demographic problems that 

 arise and develop in the course of the socialist reconstruction of society. My 

 task is that of showing the social-economic and social-structual limits of the 

 problem of the control of aging and of the mean life span. Achievement of this 

 task is largely connected with an analysis and evaluation of statistical-demo- 

 graphic materials." 



The creation of a new branch of physiological-biochemical science, namely, 

 that of age-associated physiology and biochemistry, is inseparably linked with 

 the scientific work of A. V. Nagorniy (1923-1953). In his investigations, he set 

 himself the task of elevating the study of the problems of aging and longevity to 

 the level of the establishment of a new branch of biological science, namely, 

 ontophysiology, covering the mechanisms of the entire vital cycle of development 

 of the whole animal organism, from its conception to its death. 



Nagorniy's first theoretical study appeared as early as 1923: "Life, Old У 

 Age, and Death," and in 1934 he began his extensive experimental investiga- 

 tions, together with his pupils (I. N. Bulankin, V. N. Nikitin, A. A. Rubanovskiy, 

 I. D. Shumenko, V. I. Makhin'ko, O. P. Silin, R. I. Golubistkaya, Ye. V. 

 Parina, M. P. Kuznetsova, Ye. A. Sazonova, and others), for the purpose of 

 making a systematic study of age-associated changes in higher animals. At the 

 same time, many ideas were accumulated for the establishment of a future 

 theory of ontogenesis. 



Proceeding from the dialectic-materialistic representation of life as a con- 

 tinuous process beginning with the fertilization of the ovum and terminating 

 with aging and death, Nagorniy fox'mulated the subject and final objectives of 

 age-associated physiology: 



"Age-associated physiology is that science which studies the functional 

 evolution of the individual vital process from its beginning and up to its natural 

 end and has as its final task the discovery of the objective mechanisms that are 

 fundamental to the individual life cycle" (1936). General and comparative 

 physiology is organically linked to age-associated physiology, the initial principle 

 of which is expressed in the following w'ords of F. Engels: "A plant, an animal, 

 every ceil at every instant of its life is identical with itself and yet differs from 

 itself as a result of its assimilation and excretion of substances, as a result of the 



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