Human Longevity

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Human Longevity.

M. Flourens, a distinguished French savant, in 1855 issued a work, in which he endeavored to demonstrate that man ought, by virtue of his natural constitution, to live for a century. His theory is, that the completion of bodily growth in men occurs at the age of twenty, and that the relation of the period of growth to the length of the entire life is as one to five. Thus, he says, the camel is eight years growing, and he lives to forty; the horse five years growing and lives to twenty-five, and so on with other animals. Therefore, he concludes that man, who is twenty years growing, ought in the natural course of events to reach the age of 100, and that nothing but a violation of the laws designed to govern the human organism, or unforeseen accidental causes, can reduce the existence of man below this average.

The Edinburgh Review devotes an article of its last issue to combatting this theory of M. Flourens. The reviewer objects that it is not shown with sufficient precision that the age of 20 is the exact period at which the formation of the physical organism of man is completed; nor are a sufficient number of instances produced from among the lower animals, to justify the adoption of the arbitrary rule that growth occupies one-fifth of the term of animal life. He also objects that practice and experience refute such a theory, for while there are undoubtedly well authenticated instances in which parties have been known to have attained the age of 150, or even more, yet these cases are so extremely rare, that they can no more be taken into account in estimating the normal duration of human existence, than can the occasional occurrence of such people as Daniel Lambert or Tom Thumb be held to determine the natural size of man.

Nor does investigation into the records of any past age, of which we have the history contemporaneously written, convey a different idea of the duration of human life from that which we gather from our own personal observation. The statistics of age gathered from the writings of Pliny, do not materially differ from those of our own census; and none of the stories which have been so often circulated respecting the excessive longevity of the negro, and other savage races, are found to bear examination.

The comparative longevity of members of various professions is another interesting branch of inquiry. Clergymen, from the pacific and uniform character of their pursuits, and the absence of those stimulating excitements which surround the mercantile men, are generally long lived; while medical men, from frequent loss of sleep, excessive locomotion, and danger of infection, are earlier victims of the grim monarch than most other classes.

Statesmen, judging from the instances given by the writer, contrive, in spite of the annoyances to which they are subjected from the rapacity of partisans and the solicitations of office seekers, to prolong their existence often beyond the ordinary term of human life. Dandolo reached the age of 97; Cardinal Fleury, 90; Bolingbroke 79; Alberoni 80; Pompal 83. The last generation of European statesmen presented a similar category, in the persons of Talleyrand, Metternich, and Nosselrode:¹ and the parts filled in English politics just now by Lyndhurst, Brougham Lansdowne, Palmerston, Aberdeen, &c., furnish other instances, contemporaneously with those of Colonel Benton, General Cass, J. R. Giddings, Ex-President Van Buren, and others here—proving that the heaviest political burdens may be borne and tasks performed, without curtailing the term and space of the natural life, or detracting from the intellectual vigor of earlier years.

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