Senescence, the Last Half of LifeHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Senescence, the Last Half of Life
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Geriatrics
The chief psychological inference seems to be that the old generally
refuse to face squarely and come to terms with the death-thought
consciously because it is more fatal to them than to the young, but
fly to every kind of relief from it by diversion to other things and
themes. In age there is often a narrowing of the intellectual horizon
to the immediate environment and this itself is opiative. Thus nature
alleviates in the old the fear of death, which impends and which they
know to be near. They sometimes wonder just how it will come but rarely
dwell upon such details as their own obsequies or leaving last messages
and think more often, if their thoughts stray to such subjects, of the
effects their demise will entail upon the course of life of others. The
fact is, the race has always found death too terrible to be faced in
all its horrors and has camouflaged and disguised its grim details by
tombs and avoided the direct envisagement of it by focusing attention
upon the soul that survives in ways we shall see more clearly hereafter.
Some individuals’ returns transcended my rubrics and have a value
in themselves that merit, and I hope will find, publication in full
elsewhere. One man known and loved wherever the English language is
spoken, who died in 1921 in his 84th year, had the supreme good fortune
for nearly thirty years to have the almost daily association and
assistance of a sagacious lady physician who entered sympathetically
into all his interests and became his literary executor and biographer.
This venerable man, so buoyant in his writings, grew depressed as
age advanced, especially toward nightfall, although this is nowhere
expressed in his books but abounds in his diaries. He developed an
interest that seems abnormal in everything pertaining to diet, tried
scores of new foods and drinks, only to discard them one after another,
and became so averse to tea, coffee, and smoking that it was hard for
him to tolerate those addicted to them. But it was on the problems
connected with constipation and evacuation that his interest seems
to have become most exaggerated. In his converse even with the young
but especially with those near his own age he constantly reverted to
this subject and his favorite theme of conversation seems to have
been on topics of personal and especially dietary hygiene. He studied
the chemistry of nutrition and corresponded with experts upon the
subject and attempted to carry out upon himself all their findings as
he understood them. Eggs he thought more or less poisonous and for a
time he seemed almost to think that the hens that laid them could not
be suitable food. His idiosyncrasies in this field would constitute
a unique theme for study that would have lessons all its own. He was
always checking his appetite and experimenting upon and observing
himself. There were, in this case, somewhat unique signs of an Indian
summer. He wrote twelve books from the age of 30 to 64, and fifteen
from 64 to near 84.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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