Senescence, the Last Half of LifeHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Senescence, the Last Half of Life
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Geriatrics
In Steinach’s experiments with rats, which pass through the life
stages so rapidly, he used the method of transplantation of testicular
glands furnished by three-months-old individuals and this grafting
need not necessarily be _in situ_ but in various parts of the body.
If intussusception took place, as it generally did if the operation
was well performed, the change here was generally marked within two
weeks, as his photographs show. More or less of Steinach’s work has
been confirmed, Ebstein tells us, by other observers who have shown
that not only in rats but in guinea pigs the transfer of ovaries and
testes between the sexes makes the male, to some extent, become female,
and _vice versa_. Sex differences, Steinach thinks, do not result
from anatomical differences in the organs transferred but are due to
functions residing in certain cells, especially those of Leydig or
Lutein. It is their secretions that determine sex characteristics.
Indeed, they are really glands and vitality and vigor depend upon
their state. Youth is the freshening up of these glands. No one has
recognized more clearly than Steinach that there is a false old age
that has been, in a sense, imposed by civilization upon elderly people
and given them a rôle they have more or less passively accepted, just
as in the same way there are spurious forms of other diseases. Some of
Steinach’s critics have suggested that all he has done is to throw off
these artificial inhibitions and give old age the true character nature
intended it to have. But even if this criticism has any weight against
his conclusions respecting old age in man, it certainly cannot apply
to his studies of senescent animals, for in them the traits of old age
were unmistakable, as not only photographs but, far more, activities
showed. They certainly do seem to be really rejuvenated and not merely
to be laying aside a sham old age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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