Aging

“ Age is not so much a matter of years as of the limpidity, the suppleness of the protoplasm of the cells of the body, and there [Pg 339] is nothing which will age the protoplasm like aging thoughts and serenity enemies, such as worry, anxiety, fear, anger, hatred, revenge, or any discordant emotion. If you keep your protoplasm young by holding youthful ideals, there is no reason why you should not live well into the teens of your second century. ”

“ Thus, in fine, all not later than the fourth decade or whenever they note that their youth has fled or that any of their powers have begun to abate, should not only boldly face the fact that they are aging but begin serious preparations for old age, so that this stage of life be not427 only happier but more efficient than it is and that it render to the world a service never so needed and never so possible to render as now. ”

“ So, too, we speak of middle age and think vaguely of it as half way between birth and death or between adolescence and senescence. If we think of life as a binomial curve rising from a base line at birth and sinking into it at death, midway is the highest point with the longest ordinate; and as the crest of a wave has its spindrift, so life at this point often foams, or at least shows emulsive tendencies. We come in sight of the descent while the ascent behind is still visible. ”

“ These more marked nodes in the unity of man’s individual existence are: (1) childhood, (2) adolescence from puberty to full nubility, (3) middle life or the prime, when we are at the apex of our aggregate of powers, ranging from twenty-five or thirty to forty or forty-five and comprising thus the fifteen or twenty years now commonly called our best, (4) senescence, which begins in the early forties, or before in woman, and (5) senectitude, the post-climacteric or old age proper. ”

“ As charity has always been praised as a virtue, it is now becoming also a science, and the peculiar nature and needs of old age are being better understood, although there is yet very much to be done in studying this stage of life which has in the past been so neglected and misunderstood. We are now far more ignorant of senescence than of adolescence, childhood, or middle age, but it is quite as unique, on the whole, and more apart than any of these other periods. ”

“ As a psychologist I am convinced that the psychic states of old people have great significance. Senescence, like adolescence, has its own feelings, thoughts, and wills, as well as its own physiology, and their regimen is important, as well as that of the body. Individual differences here are probably greater than in youth. ”

“ Many things meant or not meant to do so, remind us of our age. Friends and perhaps even critics show that they take it into consideration. Shortcomings that date from earlier years are now ascribed to age. We feel, often falsely, that we are observed or even spied upon for signs of its approach, and we are constantly tempted to do or say things to show that it is not yet upon us. Only later comes the stage of vaunting it, proclaiming openly our tale of years and perhaps posing as prodigies of senescence. ”

“ Believing profoundly that involution is just as interesting a phase of life as evolution and not being satisfied with the poems, essays, and meditations of literary men and women who have addressed the public on the theme of senescence, which are, as we saw in a former chapter, often more or less hortatory, consolatory, or else were composed as exercises to hearten themselves against the great enemy, it seemed worth while to try to seek a new contact with the fresh spontaneous thoughts and feelings of normal old people concerning their estate. ”

“ To be tending towards death from five-and-forty seems to them ridiculous. So it would be as a matter of sentiment, among people who think about death in such an exaggerated way as we, of this age, do. But I am here speaking of the natural facts which bear upon the condition of old age; and that is my concern with forty-five. In a rough way, the physiological distribution of our life is set down as including five-and-twenty years of growth, five-and-twenty of decline, and twenty of maturity between them. ”

“ Happily for her dawning senescence, it is one of the great achievements of our age that she has found a splendid vicarious function in culture and new social, vocational, professional, and political services, so that she can now give to mankind much that is best in her that was once confined to the narrower sphere of domestic life, and be little or none the worse but perhaps the better for it. ”

“ We may become so discontented with our achievements or our environment that we change our whole plan of life. In the fifties we feel that half a century is a long time to have lived and compare our vitality with that of our forbears and contemporaries367 of the same age. Memory for names may occasionally slip a cog. We go to the physician for a “once over” to be sure that all our organs are functioning properly. We realize that if we are ever to accomplish anything more in the world we must be up and at it and give up many old hopes and ambitions as vain. ”

“ Before we advert to the nature of our adaptations for this period of life, we must draw a distinction between age and "premature old age." The former is the decline of nature, which must always take place, whilst the latter is the result of disease or improper habits. ”

“ THERE is always something harsh and painful in the manner in which the anatomist and physiologist has to develope the characteristics of old age. The rude rending of all the drapery, the removing of the veil from the fading brow, and bring­ing out with microscopic precision every furrow that time has made there, seems unkind and almost cruel. ”

“ The ability to hold mentally the picture of youth in all its glory, vivacity and splendor has a powerful influence in restraining the old age processes.
Old age begins in the heart. When the heart grows cold the skin grows old, and the appearances of age impress themselves on the body. The mind becomes blighted, the ideals blurred, and the juices of life congealed. ”

“ It is not the living matter itself that grows old so much as the framework in which it works--the furnishings of the vital laboratory. There are various processes of rejuvenescence, e.g. rest, repair, change, reorganisation, which work against the inevitable processes of senescence, but sooner or later the victory is with ageing. ”

“ They should endeavor to learn to live along a line of steady development; to keep themselves in the forefront of thought and endeavor; to repudiate old age as more a matter of want of will than of necessity—and so abjure a statement I have recently heard from a young physician—that the only disease for which there is no remedy is old age. There is a remedy in living en rapport with the subtle forces of growth. ”

“ The physiology of old age is well understood—general sluggishness of all the functions, stiffness of the joints, more or less so-called rheumatism, loss of strength, wasting tissues, broken sleep, failing hearing and eyesight, capricious appetite, and so on. But the psychology of old age is not so easily described. The old man reasons well, the judgment is clear, the mind active, the conscience alert, the interest in life unabated. ”

“ Senescence is, in no small degree, a state of mind as245 well as a state of body, and the study of it as such has been so far strangely neglected but is now in order. Even doctors who have told us most about it have made few intensive investigations of its nature and there are very few gerontologists; while the alienists who have described the senile psyche have done so only in general terms that add but little to what is obvious to common experience and observation. ”

“ We have shown in previous chapters, through facts from pathological anatomy, experimental pathology, and clinical medicine, that old age is a disease characterized by the abundant growth of connective tissue, diminution of the oxidations, and a condition of auto-intoxication. ”

“ A sagacious and venerable correspondent has suggested to the writer that the time is ripe for some kind of a senescent league of national dimensions which should, of course, establish relations with all existing associations of the old but should slowly develop a somewhat elaborate organization of its own, with committees on finance, on the literature of senescence, including its psychology, physiology and hygiene, etc. ”

“ For growing old is simply growing hard. We begin life as squashy little babies. Our bones are like green sticks. Our flesh is like dough, only the softest cloth must touch our skins, and Nurse has to hold her hand under our poor backs to keep our heads from dropping off. ”

“ Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour? Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one. We call it by many names,—fever, intemperance, insanity, stupidity and crime; they are all forms of old age ”

“ You see old men without an ounce of fat on their bodies, their skin loose on their bones, wizened, their little faces wrinkled and apelike, with hair thin and grey; and they totter under their burdens to the edge of the grave in which at last they shall have rest. And still the coolies go, not exactly running, but not walking either, sidling quickly, with their eyes on the ground to choose the spot to place their feet, and on their faces a strained, anxious expression. ”

“ Hooked toward the old man and the child, marvelling, as before observed, that they wore clothing after the manner of the earth-kin, and bore the appearance of extreme youth and extreme age. "Is it possible that years affect souls? Do we grow old, as well as need garments in the other world?" ”

“ There are three, and only three modes of death, or release from the physical body—by old age, by disease, or by violence. Old age is the natural and desirable close of the chapter of physical plane experience. It is most desirable to live to ripe old age and accumulate a large harvest of experience. To live long and actively [72] is excellent fortune. It is not well to pass into the astral world with strong physical desires. As old age comes on the desire forces subside. ”

“ Old men should dwell upon their childhood and youth, for this means rejuvenation. Hence association of the old with others whom they knew when young is most helpful. Habits, customs, and even diet, must95 be changed, but not too often or too much. One must constantly observe and study the effect upon himself of all the items of regimen. Grief, depression, excessive fear, lack of patience, are passions that feed upon and age the body. ”

“ I have had in mind throughout chiefly the nature and needs of intelligent people passing or past middle life quite as much as of those actually entering old age. It is hoped that the data here garnered and the views propounded may help to a better and more correct understanding of the nature and functions of old age, and also be a psychologist’svi contribution to the long-desired but long-delayed science of gerontology. ”

“ Let us glance briefly at the public and private provisions in different lands for the care of the aged, another large topic with a literature of its own. Here, too, we find great diversity of method and theory which it would be premature to attempt to harmonize. Indeed, so limited is our present knowledge of old age that the available data here also open rather than close most of the great questions about it, although we do seem to be at the beginning of a new era regarding this stage of life. ”

“ If we had a similar investigation of the old as compared with the young, my own partial studies incline me to believe that this conviction of personal persistence beyond the grave in general loses its force in senescence, as indeed it becomes vital only at adolescence. ”

“ But the fact that living at the expense of life, cuts down, here and there, in the prime of life, or even at the age of fifty, a few individuals, though this of itself is no trivial evil, is not all. Half of what we call the infirmities of old age—and thus charge them upon Him who made the human frame subject to age—have their origin in the same source ”

“ They increase in the following order—liver, digestion, apoplexy, nerves, heart, kidneys. One’s enjoyment of food is greater perhaps than discriminative. Many reminders of age are overcome by warming up. Skin emanations may be offensive. Traits of a mature mind are poise, deliberation, economy and the largest output of judgment, like the Roman senators or seniors. Irritability is common. Youth wants to know; age wants to be.
* * * * *
C. A. Ewald,162 one of the most eminent of German professors of biology, gives us one of the most condensed statements on the subject of old age. ”

“ We cannot outgrow and look back upon old age, for the course of time cannot be reversed, as Plato fancied life beginning in senility and ending in the mother’s womb. The literature on this theme is limitedviii and there are few specialists in gerontology even among physicians. Its physiological and pathological aspects have been treated not only for plants and animals but for man, and this has been done best by men in their prime. ”

“ They have brought their scientific medical studies to such perfection that disease has been eliminated, and even the ordinary signs of the approach of old age have been to a large extent got rid of. Practically no one appears old, and it would seem that they hardly feel old; but, after a life somewhat longer than our own the desire to live gradually fades away, and the man dies. ”