294 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



spiratione, set up the theory that every organism from the very 

 beginning of life contains the innate heat, the decrease and final 

 disappearance of which are the causes of senility and death : 

 " Generatio igitur est prima altricis animae communio cum calore, 

 vita autem illius mansio. Juventus est accretio, quam prima 

 refrigeratrix pars suscipit. Senectus eius ipsius partis dimi- 

 nutio. . . ." We find this doctrine, which, indeed, lasted until the 

 days of scholasticism and even later, in the physiological system 

 of Heraclitus, derived from Hippocrates and the followers of 

 Aesculapius. Thus, for example, Anselm in his Gerocomica sive 

 de senum regimine (Venetiis, 1606) speaks of old age as " esse 

 viventis defectum ex debilitate calidi innati ob naturalem diminu- 

 tionem humidi radicalis." 



Cicero gave another interpretation of old age, comparing it 

 to a disease : " ipsa senectus est mwbus." Although this doctrine 

 is essentially erroneous, since old age is a special phase of life 

 just as are childhood, youth, and maturity, it nevertheless assumed 

 many different aspects in the course of time, forming the subject 

 matter of many literary works, in which true physiological senility 

 is constantly confounded with that studied by Charcot in our own 

 day under the name of the pathology of old age. Amongst those 

 who have contributed to this literature are Camerario (1684), 

 Schraeder (1699), Glagau (1705), Hutter (1732), the last-named 

 of whom proposed to prove " quod senectus omnino morbus sit, 

 et instar morbi in corpus agat." Other writers disagreed with 

 this view and took up a more accurate and scientific position. 

 If we regard man not as something complete and incapable of 

 change during his life, and bear in mind that although his outward 

 conditions may remain the same, he himself is constantly changing, 

 and passes through certain spontaneous crises, such as puberty 

 and the change of life, we cannot fail to see that old age is the 

 last stage of the evolutionary process to which man is subject 

 during his individual life, that it is the natural phase of an 

 uninterrupted development based upon the internal complex 

 constitution of the living substance, of which the germ or fertilised 

 ovum is the first beginning. 



This idea, which Verworn amongst modern writers has treated 

 in his Allgemeinen Physiologic, is not entirely new. 



Bacon puts the question well in his Historia vitae et mortis 

 (1623), and points out that organic repairs are made only during 

 youth, and so extensively during that period that they increase the 

 substance of the body ; but " vergente aetate, inequalis admodum 

 fit reparatio." It is worthy of note that he distinguishes clearly 

 between those parts which can readily be repaired (the blood, 

 flesh, and fat) and other tissues and organs sicciores aut porosiores 

 (membranes, nerves, arteries, veins, bones, and cartilages) in which 

 the process of repair is difficilius et cum jactura. 



