p. 167 | The Age of Man by O. A. Constantine

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 22, 1879

The Age of Man.

By O. A. Constantine

Professor Farraday adopts Flourin's physiological theory that the natural age of man is one hundred years. The duration of life he believes to be measured by the time of growth. When once the bones and epiphyses are united, the body grows no more, and it is at twenty years this union is effected in man.

The natural termination of life is five removes from this point. Man being twenty years in growing, lives five times twenty years—that is to say, one hundred years; the camel is eight years in growing, lives five times eight—that is to say, forty years; the horse is five years in growing, and lives twenty-five years, and so with other animals. The man who does not die with sickness lives anywhere from eighty to one hundred years. Providence has given a man a century of life; but he does not attain it, because he inherits disease, eats unwholesome food, gives license to his passions, and permits vexation to disturb his healthy equipoise; he does not die, he kills himself.

The professor divides life into two equal halves, growth and decline, and those halves into infancy and youth, virility and age. Infancy extends to the twentieth year, youth to the fiftieth, because it is during this time the tissues become firm; virility from fifty to seventy-five, during which the organism remains complete, and at seventy-five old age commences. O. A. CONSTANTINE. Woodburn, Ill.