When is a man old? Van Wyck Brooks, in his World of Washington Irving, says of William Bartram, the eighteenth-century botanist, “Too frail to travel any longer, for he was in his early sixties …” In the First World War I saw thousands of patients, all young men. One day in one of the hospital beds I found an elderly man. Later I learned that he was in his early forties, not very much older than I was. During my boyhood on Cape Cod I knew many retired sea captains, gray haired and gray bearded, who were in their fifties. I am sure that they agreed with me that they were elderly. We have had to revise our standards.

To what do we, who have survived longer, owe the success of our initial striving towards longevity? First and most important is the choosing of the proper progenitors. Some people are built to last-others are not-and we are all living within the limits set for us, which, by taking thought, we can no more exceed than we can add a cubit to our stature by the same process. So much for heredity; then comes environment. The improvement in living conditions, the development of better public health and hygiene, and the great advances in modern medicine and surgery have worked in our favor. And the third great factor is destiny, divine will, or whatever each of us wishes to call it: the fact that the other fellow’s brakes held, or that we took the second plane, which did not crash-that, as the fatalist puts it, our numbers had not yet come up.

Remember that certain evidences of aging are to be expected. To some gray hair or a bald pate. To almost all a less keen memory for recent events, a tendency to puff a little on the second or third flight of stairs, visual difficulties, less accurate physical coordination-all to be more or less expected if they remain within moderate limits. Like Dr. Holmes’ ancient vehicle on its hundredth birthday:

There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,

A general flavor of mild decay

But nothing local as one may say.

*105/276/5*

GENERAL HEALTH