WHO SHALL INHERIT LONG LIFE? 



511 



•Photograph by W. T. Oxley, from the Collections of the Genealogical Record Office 



eive generations of women in a Minnesota household 



Mrs. Karl Melden was 89; her daughter, Mrs. Anne Kastell, 61 ; granddaughter, Mrs. Han- 

 nah Gustafson, 41 ; great-granddaughter, Mrs. Ann Bergernt, 21 ; and great-great-grand- 

 daughter, Mary Valdine, aged 7 months, when this photograph was taken. Note the remark- 

 able inheritance in similarity of the eyes, even in the baby. 



people will have passed away long before 

 the lapse of fifty years. The extreme 

 limit of human life probably does not ex- 

 tend very far beyond the hundred-year 

 mark, and only very few live to be even 

 eighty or ninety. 



The few who live to extreme old age 

 are people who have proved themselves to 



be immune, or at least resistant, to the 

 diseases that have carried off the vast 

 majority of their fellows. They have 

 been exposed to all the diseases and acci- 

 dents of life and have not succumbed. 

 They have proved themselves to be re- 

 sistant, not to a single disease alone, but 

 to all diseases ; and the fact that they 



