The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic StudiesMetchnikoff, Elie
Science
The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies
Metchnikoff, Elie
Aging; Hygiene; Longevity; Older people -- Social conditions
Certain abnormalities in the condition of the sexual organs are
occasionally found in men and women, but these cannot be compared with
the production of sexless individuals that has taken place amongst
other social creatures. I cannot accept the view that we are to see
something analogous to the case of worker bees in the prohibition of
sexual relations imposed by some religious systems on a certain number
of individuals. But in any event there is little importance in this
occurrence, which is rapidly becoming rarer.
In recent times, both in Europe and the United States of America, there
has been an active development of a femininist movement impelling women
towards higher education. Women, no longer content with the avocations
of mother and housewife, have pressed into professions such as law and
medicine. There is a steady increase in the number of women who study
at the Universities, and countries like Germany, which have tried to
exclude women from higher studies, will soon have to yield before an
irresistible pressure.
Can we regard the results of this movement as analogous to the
production of sexless workers which has taken place amongst social
insects? I think not. It is undoubtedly true that a certain number
of young women, who, for some reason or other are unlikely to marry,
devote themselves to scientific study. In these cases, however,
celibacy is the cause, not the result of the increased intellectual
activity. On the other hand, it must be remembered that many women
students of science eventually marry. In St. Petersburg, for instance,
there were 1,091 women in the Medical School; of these 80 were already
married and 19 were widows. Of the remaining 992, 436 or 44 per cent.
married during the course of their studies.
Observation of the femininist movement, which has lasted for more than
forty years, shows that in most cases there is no tendency towards the
formation of individuals resembling the infertile worker insects. Most
lady doctors and learned women would like nothing better than to be the
founders of a family. Even the women who have been most distinguished
in the scientific world are no exception to the rule. In this relation
it is very interesting to follow the details of the life of Sophie
Kowalevsky, one of the most notable of learned women. In her youth,
when she began to study mathematics, she would not admit that feelings
of love had any importance. Later on, however, when she felt herself
growing old, these sentiments awoke in her to such an extent that on
the day when the prize of the Academy of Sciences was bestowed on her,
she wrote to one of her friends, “I am getting innumerable letters of
congratulation, but by the strange irony of fate, I have never felt so
unhappy.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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