The problem of age, growth, and death : a study of cytomorphosis, based on lectures at the Lowell Institute, March, 1907 / by Charles S. Minot.

  • Minot, Charles Sedgwick, 1852-1914.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The problem of age, growth, and death : a study of cytomorphosis, based on lectures at the Lowell Institute, March, 1907 / by Charles S. Minot. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    and at forty it is already less ; at fifty decidedly less ; and at sixty the change has become more marked ; un- til at seventy years v/e find that the height has shrunk from 174 to 161. There it remains, or thereabouts, through the remainder of life, though there may be a small further diminution. This decrease in stature is due largely to the changes in the vertebral column. First of all there is a stoop. The vertebral column is, to be sure, never straight, but in old age it be- comes more curved, and the result is a falling of the total stature. But this is not the chief cause, for in addition to this the softer cartilages and elements of the spinal column become harder, change into bone, and as that change occurs they acquire a less extent and become smaller, and the result is that the verte- bral column as a whole collapses somewhat and thus increases the diminution of height. We find, as we look at the old, a great change to have come over the face. The roundness of youth has departed; the cheeks are sunken ; the eyes have fallen far back; the lips are drawn in. All of these changes indicate to us, when we think upon them, the fact that there has been a certain shrinkage and shrivelling of that which is within and beneath the skin. Expressed in technical terms, we should call this an atrophy, and to anatomists the mere sight of the face of a very old person, Fig. 2, reveals at once this fundamental fact of an atrophy of the parts, an actual loss of some of their bulk, which is one of the most characteristic and fundamental marks of old