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

90 страница из 141

We have also knowledge of a very interesting case, that of an Irishman, an ex-navy man, who, according to the admiralty official statistics, was 113 years old, and whose body was dissected by Professor Cunningham, Professor of Anatomy of Edinburgh University. As Dr. Cunningham, himself, told us, the testes were sound and healthy looking, and the cartilages of the chest bone not yet ossified. Death was not due to old age, but to a prostate abscess, except for which the body was in good condition.

Metschnikoff also mentions in his “Etudes sur la Nature Humaine” examples of old men between 94 and 104 years, who suffered from copious spermatorrhœa, and in whose semen he has found a great quantity of spermatozoa. He and Dr. Weinberg observed similar conditions in old dogs of 18 to 22 years of age, one of whom, just before his death, had shown marked sexual tendencies.^[107] Saverio Spangaro,^[108] examining the testicles of a number of old men, found many of them atrophied, but others showed microscopically no difference to the testicles of younger individuals; there were only slight microscopical changes. This again proves our theory, that old age is not due to the degeneration of one, but of several glands with internal secretion, similarly to other diseases of these glands, like diabetes, acromegaly, etc.