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A1CR
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Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 559
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 Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 5:36 am Post subject: "Modern" longevity? JAMA 100 year comparison |
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Have concepts of longevity changed over the years? A comparison of JAMA 1906 vs. JAMA 2006 (JAMA is the Journal of the American Medical Association)
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According to William Curtis, the well-known newspaper correspondent, the
actuaries of the large life insurance companies do not consider that the
length of human life is increasing in the present conditions of our
civilization. Admitting that there has been an improvement in the mortality
of infants in the large centers of population this has not been
counterbalanced, in their opinion, the deteriorating influences acting on
the vitality of those of riper years. Moreover, by the preservation of the
weaklings in infancy the death rate in more advanced life has been
increased, and this with the modern tendency to urban concentration and the
intense strain of modern life has tended to decrease the average of
longevity in spite of better sanitary conditions, the triumphs of medicine
and surgery, the higher standards of living, and all the other conditions
that might seem favorable to the prolongation of existence.
While the death rate from diseases such as phthisis, and certain obviously
preventable disorders like typhoid, has probably decreased, the increased
mortality from heart troubles, kidney disorders, cancer and pneumonia, has
more than made up the difference. It must be remembered, however, that the
statistics of the large life insurance companies do not cover the whole
population, but only a certain selected and provident class, and probably
just that class that is most subjected to the high tension conditions of our
modern civilization. It is not difficult to suppose that this class is
perhaps of all others the least generally influenced by modern sanitary
advances, and in making an estimate of the general average the figures it
gives may be somewhat misleading, no matter how reliable they are for the
special class they represent. The testimony of life insurance actuaries,
however, can not be disregarded altogether as a warning against certain
existing tendencies affecting the vitality of our population. Increasing
luxury and speculation have much to account for what is ordinarily and
superficially attributed, perhaps too exclusively, to the strenuous life. It
is not hard work that kills so much as bad habits and neglect of ordinary
hygienic living which no public sanitation can entirely counteract. That
occupation itself is a life-saving factor is shown by the frequent rapid
decline of health and early death in individuals who have retired from
active business.
Civilization saves the weaklings and interferes with natural selection and
survival of the fittest, but it is not the struggle for life that is in
itself most fatal. As a philosophic humorist has said with much truth, "Work
is a snap. It is the intermissions that do up the nervous system." |
http://jama.ama-assn.org/ |
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