On means for the prolongation of life.

  • Hermann David Weber
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On means for the prolongation of life. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    179/230 (page 167)
    all events to mitigate them. We are not in favour of blind optimism, but of realism, and this realism not rarely leads to victory. Many people seem to have been startled by a statement in Professor Osier's Valedictory Address at Johns Hopkins University [93] about the comparative uselessness of men above 60, and that all the effective and vitalizing work of the world is done between 25 and 40. His partly jocose remarks seem to have been mis- interpreted. I understand Osier's remarks much in the same way as Sir Samuel Wilks does in his philosophical article De Senectute [142]. He thinks that the principal activity, we may call it the creative period, ceases in the middle of life, viz., about 50, that, however, judgment and ability to do useful work may last to much more advanced life. To use the words of Sir Samuel Wilks : Men (older than 50) may still continue to take their appropriate share in the affairs of life. The work which they then do need not be original and new, implying a reten- tion of the same mental activity as they had previously possessed, but rather the turning to account the knowledge which they had pre- viously gained, and so utilizing their experiences for the benefit of others as did the Nestors of old {La?icet^ 1905? vol. ii., p. 1606).