Читать книгу Old Age Deferred. The causes of old age and its postponement by hygienic and therapeutic measures онлайн

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On the day that we began to pen these lines we were congratulating one of the multifarious professors of the medical faculty of Berlin on his 73d birthday. He is in perfect and robust health, and is at present engaged on the third edition of his work, which is well known in medical circles all over the world. He told us his father was 33 and his mother 48 when they died, and several of his brothers died before reaching old age. However, his grandfather lived to be 90. This savant has always led a sober and regular life.

Sometimes chronic diseases, like syphilis, etc., do not prevent people who come from a long-lived family from attaining to a very old age. Thus a patient of mine, a French gentleman of 72 years, who still shows symptoms of the tertiary form of syphilis acquired fifty-two years ago, is still looking in splendid health, like a man of 60, and was complaining to me about his too strong sexual feelings. Likewise, the father of a patient of mine has reached his 96th year in spite of his syphilis, which he acquired an age ago.