University of the Pacific School of Dentistry - Chips Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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DR. WINSLOW ANDERSON

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Mammals and Fishes Extreme old age is not confined to humanity alone. Many mammals and fishes live to a great age. The elephant and whale often pass the century mark. The crocodile and the tortoise Cturtlesj keep on growing as long as they live, which is often 100 to 150 years. The pike and the carp score the century and a half mark. Even the lowly sea-anemone has been known to live in captivity 55 years. F owls The parrot may reach 100 years: the raven, 50, the blue macaw, 645 the eagle-owl, 533 the heron, 60, the swan, 70, and the goose, 80 years. Trees The most remarkable longevity is found in the life of trees. The oak, cedar, and many hardwood trees live many centuries. But the giant trees, the Sequoia Gigantea of California, surpass all organic life in age. The giant of the forest at Wawoiia, California, was a hundred feet tall when Noah began to build his ark. It was over 1,000 years old when Abraham went to Egypt and Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed by fire. It was a giant tree when the Egyptian pyra- mids under Rameses Il. were built. It was 200 feet tall when Solomon built his temple, and was 100 feet in circumference when the Norsemen discovered America, nearly 1,000 years ago. These trees are survivors of the tertiary times and are probably as old as the creation of Adam, as they occur in a fossil state in the polar regions in British Columbia and in Europe. Longevity depends on heredity, physical surround- ings, environment, including temperature, slow growth, and late reproduction. Why Do We Grow Old? To discuss longevity scientifically requires some consideration of the vital phenomena called life, I6

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growth or development, and decay. It is universally admitted that human life begins with a single cell, the ovum. This is fertilized by another single cell, the spermatozoon. Each of these single cells is com- posed of protoplasm containing '75 to S5 per cent of water and 25 to 15 per cent oflproteids Calbuminsj made up of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxvgen, sul- phur, and phosphorus, and a nucleus largely made up of nuclein, a phosphor-proteid compound. The essence of life, from a physical, physiological, and anatomic basis would seem to reside in this Hgerminal matter called nucleated protoplasm. At all events, each cell is a unit of life, both anatomically and physiologically, and the phenomena of life are ext- hibited in these cells, whether the organism is uni- cellular, such as the ameba, or multicellular, such as the complex organism called man. At first the em- bryonic or primitive cells are nearly all alike, but they early exhibit the same life phenomena that their parent cells possess, viz., multiplication or pro- liferation and morphosis or differentiation Ccytomor- phosisj. Cells multiply by the well-known processes of karyokinosis, mitosis and akinesis, amitosis, indi- rect and direct cell division, until we see them arranged into three distinct layers of differention cells or tissues in the embryo, known as the ectoderm or epiblast, mesoderm or mesoblast, and endoderm or hypoblast-the blasto-dermic or germ layers from which develop the whole complex human body from a single cell. From the ectoderm or epiblast develop the skin, nervous system, and the sense organs, etc.: from the mesoderm, the skeleton, muscles, heart, blood-vessels, etc., from the endoderm, the epithelium of the alimentary canal, chief glands, etc. The human body is thus composed of multicellular differentiated structures, skin, muscle, bone, nerves, vessels, special organs, etc., etc. The Cause of Senescence Arterial Degeneration.-According to one theory of I9