amount of absorption may take place from it. It serves chiefly as a reservoir of waste matter and is usually the seat of extensive putrefactive change. The products of putrefaction are absorbed by the blood and there results a constant auto-intoxication of the body which Metchnikoff believes to be the principal agent in senile degeneration. Mammals, if they escape from enemies, diseases and accidents, fall victims to premature senility as the result of the putrefactive changes in their intestines, and the average mortality of the species is much too high, the normal specific longevity being rarely if ever attained. Metchnikoff urges, and so far probably is followed by all competent authorities, that improvements in the conditions of life, greater knowledge of disease and of hygiene and simplification of habits are tending to reduce the average mortality of man and the domestic animals, and to bring the average longevity nearer the specific longevity. He adds to this, however, a more special theory, which, although it appears rapidly to be gaining ground, is yet far from being accepted. The theory is that duration of life may be prolonged by measures directed against intestinal putrefaction.
The process of putrefaction takes place in masses of badly-digested food, and may be combated by careful dieting, avoidance of rich foods of all kinds and particularly of flesh and alcohol. Putrefaction, however, cannot take place except in the presence of a particular group of bacteria, the entrance of which to the body can be prevented to a certain extent. But it would be impossible or impracticable to secure a sterilized diet, and Metchnikoff urges that the bacteria of putrefaction can be replaced or suppressed by another set of microbes. He found that there was a widely spread popular belief in the advantage of diet consisting largely of products of soured milk and that there was a fair parallel between unusual longevity and such a diet. Experimentally he showed that the presence of the bacilli which produce lactic acid inhibited the process of putrefaction. Accordingly he recommends that the diet of human beings should include preparations of milk soured by cultures of selected lactic acid bacilli, or that the spores of such bacilli should be taken along with food favourable to their development. In a short time the bacilli establish themselves in the large intestine and rapidly stop putrefactive change. The treatment has not yet been persisted in sufficiently long by a sufficient number of different persons to be accepted as universally satisfactory, and there is even more difference of opinion as to Metchnikoff’s theory that the chief agent in senile degeneration is the stimulation of phagocytes by the products of putrefaction with the resulting destruction of the specific cells of the tissues. Metchnikoff, however, gave it to the world, not as a proved and completed doctrine, but as the line of inquiry that he himself had found most promising. He has suggested further that if the normal specific longevity were attained by human beings, old and not degenerate individuals would lose the instinct for life and acquire an instinct for death, and that as they had fulfilled the normal cycle of life, they would accept death with the same relieved acquiescence that they now accept sleep.
The various writers whose opinions have been briefly discussed agree in supposing that there is a normal specific longevity, although Metchnikoff alone has urged that this differs markedly from the average longevity, and has propounded a theory of the causes of the divergence. It is common ground that they believe the organism to be wound up, so to say, for a definite period, but have no very definite theory as to how this period is determined. A. Weismann, on the other hand, in a well-known essay on the duration of life, has developed a theory to explain the various fashions in which the gift of life is measured out to different kinds of creatures. He accepts the position that purely physiological conditions set a limit to the number of years that can be attained by each kind of multi-cellular organism, but holds that these conditions leave room for a considerable amount of variation. Duration of life, in fact, according to Weismann, is a character that can be influenced by the environment and that by a process of natural selection can be adapted to the conditions of existence of different species.
If a species is to maintain its existence or to increase, it is obvious that its members must be able to replace the losses caused by death. It is necessary, moreover, for the success of the species, that an average population of full vigour should be maintained. Weismann argues that death itself is an adaptation to secure the removal of useless and worn-out individuals and that it comes as soon as may be after the period of reproductive activity. It is understood that the term reproductive activity covers not merely the production of new individuals but the care of these by the parents until they are self-sufficient. The average longevity, according to Weismann, is adapted to the needs of the species; it is sufficiently long to secure that the requisite number of new individuals is produced and protected. He has brought together a large number of instances which show that there is a relation between duration of life and fertility. Birds of prey, which breed slowly, usually producing an annual brood of no more than one or two, live to great ages, whilst rabbits which produce large litters at frequent intervals have relatively short lives. Allowance has to be made in cases where the young are largely preyed upon by enemies, for this counteracts the effect of high fecundity. In short, the duration of life is so adapted that a pair of individuals on the average succeed in rearing a pair of offspring. Metchnikoff, however, has pointed out that the longevity of such fecund creatures must have arisen independently, as otherwise species subject to high risks of this nature would have ceased to exist and would have disappeared, as many species have vanished in the past of the world’s history.
The normal specific longevity, the age to which all normal individuals of a species would survive under the most favourable conditions, must depend on constitution and structure. No doubt selection is involved, as it is obvious that creatures would perish if their constitution and structure were not such that they could live long enough to reproduce their kind. The direct explanation, however, must be sought for in size, complexity of structure, length of period of growth, capacity to withstand the wear and tear of life and such other intrinsic qualities. The average specific longevity, on the other hand, depends on a multitude of extrinsic conditions operating on the intrinsic constitution; these extrinsic conditions are given by the environment of the species as it affects the young and the adults, enemies, diseases, abundance of food, climatic conditions and so forth. It would seem most natural to suppose that in all cases, except perhaps those of intelligent man and the domestic animals or plants he harbours, the average longevity must vary enormously with changing conditions, and must be a factor of greater importance in the survival of the species than the ideal normal specific longevity. It also seems more probable that the reproductive capacity, which is extremely variable, has been adapted to the average longevity of the species, than that, as Weismann supposed, it should itself be the determining cause of the duration of life.
References.—G. L. L. Buffon, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière, vol. ii. (Paris, 1749); Y. Bunge, Archiv. f. die gesammte Physiologie, vol. xcv. (Bonn, 1903); M. J. P. Flourens, De la longévité humaine et de la quantité de vie sur le globe (Paris, 1855); J. H. Gurney, On the Comparative Ages to which Birds live, Ibis, p. 19 (1899); Sir E. Ray Lankester, Comparative Longevity in Man and the Lower Animals (London, 1870); E. Metchnikoff, The Prolongation of Life (London, 1908); M. Oustalet, La Nature, p. 378 (1900); A. Weismann, Essays upon Heredity (Oxford, 1889). (P. C. M.)
LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807–1882), American poet, was born on the 27th of February 1807, at
Portland, Maine. His ancestor, William Longfellow, had
immigrated to Newbury, Massachusetts, in 1676, from Yorkshire, England. His father was Stephen Longfellow, a lawyer and United States congressman, and his mother, Zilpha Wadsworth, a descendant of John Alden and of “Priscilla, the Puritan maiden.”
Longfellow’s external life presents little that is of stirring interest. It is the life of a modest, deep-hearted gentleman, whose highest ambition was to be a perfect man, and, through sympathy and love, to help others to be the same. His boyhood was spent mostly in his native town, which he never ceased to
