Senescence, the Last Half of LifeHall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Science
Senescence, the Last Half of Life
Hall, G. Stanley (Granville Stanley)
Geriatrics
L. Löw[47] collects from the Scripture and post-Biblical Talmud,
German and other literature, instances of rejuvenescence in the old
which ancient Hebrew writers seem to have stressed. We all know that
sight sometimes comes back, perhaps to a marked degree, but Löw quotes
cases where wrinkles vanished, the hair was restored to its youthful
shade and increased in quantity, while teeth, after years of decay,
have sometimes grown from new roots--occasionally more than once. In
many cases sex potency has been restored as well as muscular strength,
freshness of complexion, and, more rarely, hearing. Myths, of course,
of many races detail cases where magic sleep lasting many, perhaps a
hundred, years has converted age into youth, and in Semitic folklore
this is often connected with the passage, “The righteous shall renew
their strength like the eagle.” The Hebrews were perhaps even more
fond than other people of dividing life into periods, usually in
conformity to the magic numbers 3, 4, 7, etc. The comparison of age
with the four seasons was very common, and here we may perhaps mention
Lotze’s effort to harmonize the life span with the four temperaments.
For him, childhood is sanguine on account of the ease of excitation,
the keenness of response to sensation, the ready passage of impulse
to action, and the fluctuations of mood. Youth he calls melancholic
and emotionally characterized by _Stimmungen_. It judges the items of
experience by their effect upon feeling and upon self, and oscillates
readily and widely from pleasure to pain. Mature manhood is choleric,
practical, executive, with definiteness of aim and fulfillment of ideas
and even phantasies but with less excitability of emotion; while old
age is phlegmatic, seeks repose, and has been taught by experience to
abate the life of affectivity and take the attitude of _laissez faire_.
In the modern Jewish family the authority of and respect for the father
is great, more among the orthodox and conservative than the liberal
and reformed wing of Judaism. The grandfather and -mother are always
provided for, although their authority and influence are generally
greatly diminished.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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