360 Harris M. Benedict 



have gone, by claiming that the sex cells left because they could not 

 endure the conditions any longer. 



There are some very serious objections to be raised against the argument 

 that harmful retention of waste products, due to the greater increase of 

 mass than of surface, is the basic cause of senility. Considering first the 

 condition in the human being, it is seen that the excretory surfaces con- 

 tinue to grow until the period of greatest activity is well past. Why 

 should the excretory surfaces, which proved amply sufficient during the 

 period of greatest activity, be unable to do their part after the organism 

 as a whole is much less active? 



Furthermore, if the amount of surface of the excretory organs is not 

 sufficient to eliminate waste products fast enough for the internal mass of 

 cells to continue to be active, how can be explained the rapid development 

 of the unborn child, which must depend on its mother's excretory surfaces 

 to eliminate not only her own tissues' waste but its own as well. It 

 should be borne in mind that many of the human organs have a con- 

 siderable excess power above that which is needed for ordinary excretions, 

 and there are many evidences to show that the excretory organs can 

 eliminate much more than they are usually called upon to do. 



In this theory of the 'insufficiency of excretion, the " guilty-organ " 

 theory is being met under a different form. It is not a single organ, but 

 a single function, which is at fault this tune. 



When this theory of the insufficiency of excretion produced by the 

 disproportionate increase in surface and mass is examined in the fight 

 of the facts reported for Vitis, important evidence against it is seen at 

 once. In the perennial vine with its annually increasing number of leaves, 

 there is no such discrepancy between increase in surface and mass as is 

 found in animals, and yet here, as in animals, comes this same senile 

 degeneration. If, therefore, there is a retention of harmful waste prod- 

 ucts in cells, it is not due to the apparently plausible disproportionate 

 increase of volume and surface. 



The retention of poisonous waste material, however, should be considered 

 as important among the different possible causes of senifity, as affecting 

 the active cell. The immediate harm suffered by the human body from 

 the lack of a pound of food is very much less than that which could be 

 caused by the presence in the body of a minute quantity of poison. In 

 other words, equal losses in efficiency in the functions of digestion and 



