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BOOK REVIEW |
University of California, San Francisco P.O. Box 89 The Sea Ranch, CA 95497 Email: len{at}gene.com
The Art of Living Long, by Luigi Cornaro, 1903 translation by William Butler. Springer Publishing Company, New York, 2005, 136 pp., $45.95 (paper).
"Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. If your stomach antagonizes you, pacify it with cool thoughts. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as the social ramble ain't restful. Avoid running at all times. Don't look back, something might be gaining on you."Leroy "Satchel" Paige (c. 1951)
When asked about the reasons for his longevity as a professional baseball pitcher for 22 years, the admonitions that the legendary Satchel Paige responded with could easily qualify as a cogent review of The Art of Living Long, by Luigi Cornaro. Paige's comments are certainly more succinct and entertaining than this review essay. Paige could have had the opportunity to review this book because it has been in print for almost 500 years. It is probable that only the Bible and the Koran have undergone more printings. What is equally probable is that most gerontologists have never heard of this book. Yet, for almost 500 years it has had a profound influence on how humans have thought about their health and longevity.
The Classic Literature
Of all the sciences, gerontology is unique in having historical roots that extend to the earliest writings on the human condition.
More than 3,500 years ago, during the Sumerian civilization, there appeared an epic poem written on clay tablets describing efforts to achieve immortality by the young King Gilgamesh. From that time to the present, humans have mused about this idea in every form of expression including prose, music, poetry, art, dance, speech, cinema, and theatre.
Nevertheless, this richly written historical heritage has attracted the interest of only a handful of contemporary gerontologists and geriatricians. This failure to explore the roots of their science is, at least for biogerontologists, based on the belief that those who today are intimate with DNA, retrotransposons, proteomics, genomics, transcription, translation, telomerase, and the principles of thermodynamics can learn little from a past that did not even know that atoms and molecules existed.
Those who ignore the rich past of this profession have denied themselves insight into one of the most fascinating histories of human thought. Neophytes in biogerontology would learn that speculation on the imminent likelihood of intervening in the aging process was as popular at anytime during the last three millennia as it is today. They will also learn that there has been an uninterrupted lineage of snake oil merchants, charlatans, con men, swindlers, and quacks that extends from Gilgamesh to the present day.
Utnapishtin, the Babylonian Noah, told Gilgamesh to seek a thorny plant found at the bottom of the sea that possesses powers of rejuvenation (Gruman, 1966). Today, seaweed, although thornless, is one of thousands of nostrums currently promoted commercially for the same purpose. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Even the current debates on the advantages and disadvantages of having the power to intervene in the aging process have been a part of human thought for millennia. At most times in human history one can find predictions made that intervening in the aging process will be possible in the near future. Many contemporary scientists continue to extol this belief (Hayflick, 2004a, in press).
Contemporary biogerontologists would do well to devote some of the time spent in their wet labs or offices to learn more about the history of their profession. They should do this not only to learn about the prior attempts to intervene in the aging process that have failed but also to benefit from the centuries of literature that warn of the disasters that could befall both individuals and society if we ever had that power. Examples include the myth of Eos, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the Struldbruggs in Jonathan Swifts' Gulliver's Travels.
Today, the task of acquainting oneself with this fascinating literature is made all the easier because two enlightened publishers have made available to us reprints of some of the many classics in this field.
In 1979, Arno Press, a New York Times company that, regrettably, is no longer in business reprinted 36 of these classics. Their distinguished Advisory Editor was Robert Kastenbaum and their equally distinguished Editorial Board consisted of Joseph T. Freeman, Gerald J. Gruman and Michel Philbert. I own six titles in this series, including Senescence and Rejuvenescence, by Charles Manning Child, first published in 1915. This scholarly book was 15 years in the writing and assembled the work of many observers. Child discusses many of the then-existing theories of aging that are either identical to, or form the basis of, several of today's explanations.
Johann Heinrich Cohausen's Hermippus Redivivus, published in 1885, bears the subtitle The Sage's Triumph Over Old Age and the Grave Wherein a Method is Laid Down for Prolonging the Life and Vigour of Man (anti-aging practitioners please note). The Ancestry of the Long Lived was published in 1934 by Raymond and Ruth DeWitt Pearl. Demographers and geneticists interested in nonagenarians and centenarians and the contribution made to their longevity by their ancestors will find much of what they believe today rooted in the data that the Pearls' meticulously assembled.
In Roots of Modern Gerontology and Geriatrics, Gerald R. Gruman reprinted nine classic articles by six pioneers, some of which are difficult to find and unknown to many of today's gerontologists and geriatricians. Human Longevity, Its Facts and Its Fictions, by William J. Thoms, to whom the word "folklore" is attributed, appeared in 1873. Thoms was Deputy Librarian of the House of Lords and is credited with being the first person to have the courage to challenge, and in many cases torpedo, the outrageous claims of contemporary supercentenarians by applying methods of scientific proof.
My last acquisition from Arno Press was Problems of Ageing, edited by E.V. Cowdry, published in 1939. This publication was supported by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, which also underwrote the first series of annual conferences on aging in this country. They ended in the 1960s. I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend two. The 25 chapters in this book are authored by a who's who of the leading scientists in gerontology and geriatrics in 1939.
The invertebrate biologists who now use flies and worms to study aging might well note that H. S. Jennings, the author of the chapter "Senescence and Death in Protozoa and Invertebrates" in the Cowdry volume, cites evidence from his experiments on drosophila and wrote, "In fruit flies a single gene may make a great difference in length of life" (Jennings, 1979, p. 50). This finding, first made more than 65 years ago, has been claimed by current investigators to be a recent discovery. This false belief continues to be reinforced by widespread trumpeting in the media.
Furthermore, the present enormous interest in dieting and exercise as a means of maintaining good health and extending longevity can be traced directly to its origins in Cornaro's The Art of Living Long. These are only two examples of many that could be given in which there has been a failure of contemporary scientists to appreciate that what they thought to be original was actually known years before many were born.
Modern Reprints
My only regret in assembling the group of classics from Arno Press is that I did not have the foresight to purchase the remaining 30 books in this series. But, all may not be lost. Springer Publishing Company has taken up the challenge by publishing its "Classics in Longevity and Aging" series in cooperation with the International Longevity Center and coeditors Robert N. Butler and S. Jay Olshansky. Two reprints have already appeared: The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies, by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikoff, and A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life, by Gerald J. Gruman. I am fortunate to own a copy of the original of both. My original copy of The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies is dated 1910 and, like the Springer reprint of it, is translated from the French for an American readership. My original copy has the added value of being formerly owned by Clive M. McKay whose Cornell University Stocking Hall stamp it bears (McKay discovered that caloric restriction increases longevity in laboratory rats compared to gluttonous controls.).
Metchnikoff's book is another example of how topics thought to be unique today are not. One of the nine parts of his book is titled, "Should We Try to Prolong Human Life?" He is also one of the first to observe, "Old age is not a disease and cannot be cured" (p. xxi), a statement that today I find myself almost alone in fully supporting (Hayflick, 1995, 2000a, 2004b). Metchnikoff discovered phagocytes (white blood cells that engulf bacteria and other foreign particles) and in 1908 was awarded a Nobel Prize. He coined the word "gerontology." Metchnikoff also discusses the work of August Weismann who opined "Old age depends on a limitation in the power of cells to reproduce ..." and "... the possible number of cell generations differs in different cases" (as quoted in Metchnikoff, p. 13). Metchnikoff went on to say "He has not found, however, a solution of the problem as to why multiplication of cells should cease" (p.13).
I was unaware of Weismann's 1881 writings on gerontology in 1959 and 1960 when I found that, contrary to a 60-year-old dogma, normal human cells have a finite capacity to replicate. I could not then call myself a biogerontologist, and, therefore, I take refuge in that fact as the reason why I did not know how prescient Weismann was until these quotes were rediscovered in a notable paper published more than 20 years later (Kirkwood & Cremer, 1982). In the next few decades Metchnikoff's astounding prescience was again revealed. Most normal cells cease to replicate because of the phenomenon of capping and uncapping of telomeres (located at the ends of chromosomes) leading to chromosome shortening and the triggering of further events that lead normal cells to stop proliferating. Thus, Metchnikoff had not only anticipated by 80 years the fact that normal cells cannot replicate indefinitely but also recognized that an explanation for the phenomenon would be found.
Metchnikoff was less prescient in his belief that the sea anemone could reach very great age and cites an example of one having lived for 66 years until its accidental death in Edinburgh in 1887. The belief that sea anemones can live for extremely long periods of time has been cited many times. Recent examples cite the report of anemones that lived in an aquarium at the Department of Zoology at Edinburgh University "... until 1940 or 1942 when they were all simultaneously found dead" after "... 80 to 90 years of continuous observation" (Strehler, 1977, p. 37). In a more recent iteration of this report it is argued that sea anemones "appear not to age" or that they are "immortal beyond reasonable doubt" (Kirkwood, 1999, p. 37). However, sea anemones are colonial animals whose individual cells turnover or are replaced constantly. Thus, the likelihood that any particular cell present when the sea anemone was young is also present after several decades is remote, if not impossible. The sea anemones that exist today are almost certainly not the "same" sea anemones that existed decades ago in the sense that their cells and, more importantly, the molecules that compose them have survived without turnover. The probability that any animal or plant is immortal or has the potential to be so is remote, if not impossible (Hayflick, 2000b).
The second reprint by Springer in its "Classics in Longevity and Aging" series is A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life by Gerald J. Gruman. This treatise covers history from the first recorded writings on aging and longevity until the 18th century. It is the most scholarly, thoroughly researched, and well-written book on the subject of which I am aware. My dog-eared original copy is almost twice the size of the Springer reprint that is in a handier book size format.
The Art of Living Long
The third reprint in the Springer series has now appeared. The Art of Living Long, by the Venetian, Luigi Cornaro, was first published in 1558 in Padua, Italy, where it enjoyed enormous success. During the 18th and 19th centuries it went through 50 editions in England alone. The 2005 edition is a reprint of the 1903 translation from the Italian by William Butler. I also own an edition of this book, printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1918.
The book's popularity derives from Cornaro's description of how he reached the age of 98 after abandoning, at age 50, a life of debauchery and gluttony for an abstemious and ascetic lifestyle. His new life of sobriety and temperance included a diet of a small amount of bread, meat, broth with eggs, and new wine. Cornaro said of dieting, "Whosoever wishes to eat much must eat little" (p. 13). This insight, an apparent contradiction, means that by eating little, life will be lengthened, thus providing more years to eat than would have been otherwise possible.
Devotees of Dr. Atkins' and the South Beach, Zone, Sonoma and hundreds of other diets that have been promoted in the last several decades might be surprised to learn that these diets had their roots in a book published almost 500 years ago! Furthermore, Cornaro's book, in proportion to the population at the times of printing, sold far more copies than the millions sold by any modern diet author. It remains to be seen whether any of them will, like Cornaro's is today, reprinted 500 years later in 2500. Those who study caloric restriction and its effects on longevity might also be surprised to learn that Cornaro promoted this idea centuries before it was proven experimentally by Clive McKay.
Springer Publishing Company's decision to reprint Cornaro's book carries on the 500-year-old tradition of reprinting this book. One would think that with a track record like that more gerontologists would not only know who Cornaro was but would also have read what he had written. Springer now gives them that opportunity.
The Art of Living Long includes a gray scale reproduction of a painting by Tintoretto of Luigi Cornaro that hangs in the Pitti Palace Gallery in Florence, Italy. Following it are introductions by Robert Butler and Gerald Gruman and a review of the book by Joseph Addison that appeared in The Spectator in 1711.
Cornaro divided his book into four parts written at the ages of 83, 86, 91, and 95. Part one, "La Vita Sobria" (The Temperate Life) is followed by variations on this theme in the subsequent three parts. In the second half of this publication, and also found in earlier reprints, are extracts from Lord Bacon's "History of Life and Death" and "Health and Long Life" by Sir William Temple. There is a long appendix consisting of a history of the Cornaro family, an account of "eminent Cornaros," a eulogy of Luigi Cornaro, and an article on "The Villas Erected by Luigi Cornaro."
Cornaro's advice, "The food from which a man abstains, after he has eaten heartily, is of more benefit to him than that which he has eaten" (p. 13), is also at the heart of an enormous current literature on the dangers of the rising incidence of obesity in developed countries. For instance, Olshansky and colleagues (2005) warn that if increases in obesity continue, the steady rise in life expectancy during the next 200 years will fall. "After remaining relatively stable in the 1960s and 1970s, the prevalence of obesity among adults in the United States increased by approximately 50 percent per decade throughout the 1980s and 1990s" (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, & Johnson, 2002, as quoted in Olshansky et al., 2005, p. 1104).
Two thirds of adults in the United States today are obese or overweight. In the United States, 28% of men, 34% of women, and nearly 50% of non-Hispanic Black women are currently obese (Olshansky et al., 2005). The distribution of body-mass index—BMI, the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters—(National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 2000; Pietrobelli & Heymsfield 2002) has shifted in a skewed fashion such that the proportion of people with extreme obesity has increased at an especially rapid rate. These trends have affected all major racial and ethnic groups, all regions of the country, and all socioeconomic strata (Mokdad et al., 2001), with the largest increases in obesity occurring among children and minorities (Ogden, Flegal, Carroll, & Johnson, 2002).
It should be noted, however, that data from studies on the relation between BMI and mortality have been interpreted by some to suggest that current tables of ideal height and weight and, by extension, ideal ranges of BMI, should be adjusted to include lower ideal weights for height or BMIs before age 40, as well as higher ideal weights for height or BMIs after age 40 (Andres, Elahi, Tobin, Muller, & Brant, 1985). Redefining ideal weights for height in this way would increase the projected negative effect of obesity on life expectancy because of the large increases in obesity now observed among people under age 40.
The effect of body weight on mortality has been studied extensively. In a study of more than 1 million U.S. adults, the lowest death rates were found among men with a BMI of 23.5 to 24.9 and among women with a BMI of 22.0 to 23.4 (Calle, Thun, Petrelli, Rodriguez, & Heath, 1999).
If he were alive today, Cornaro would probably observe, Mamma mia! Veda, io vi ha detto così! (Mamma mine! See, I told you so!) Considering the difficulty that he describes in mustering the will power to reverse his gluttonous ways, Cornaro also would have appreciated the admonishment of Ziggy, the cartoon character, that I found scribbled on my menu at the Palace Restaurant in New Orleans:
"The waist is a terrible thing to mind."
References
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