The Salt of Old Age

A NECESSITY of life is the salt of sodium formed by its combination with chlorin. So well known is this, that when we talk of “salt,” we mean chlorid of sodium, altho there are dozens of other salts—some medicinal, some actively poisonous.

Now comes a French physician. Prof. Pierre Delbet of the Paris Academy of Medicine, who tells us that another chlorid—that of magnesium —is equally valuable in old age.   It will positively prolong life, he avers, and is particularly effective in warding off cancer. He writes in Je Sais Tout (Paris):

“It would be absurd to try to establish a mathematical relation between a man’s years and his bodily content of magnesium.

“Some old men are worth more than some young ones.                    

“But it seems certain to me that, at the moment physical decline comes on, the magnesium diminishes, while the calcium increases.

“Now everything that we know of the chemical activity of magnesium, of its power of synthesis in organo-magnesian compounds, of its action in forming chlorophyl, authorizes the conclusion that its diminution plays a part in senility, or at least in certain of its phenomena. And this idea is fully confirmed by the fact that led me to undertake this investigation—namely, that the absorption of magnesium causes certain phases of senility to disappear.

“It would be imprudent to take up at this point the entire problem of old age. This was attempted at one time, and senility was attributed to the condition of the large intestine.

“Any theory that connects our inevitable decline to a single organ is a revival of the ancient conceptions of dualism. It supposes that one part of us, endowed with immortality, would never grow old, if another, more gross and vile, did not labor to destroy it. These dreams, even when clothed in biologic garments, are nothing but metaphysics.

“It will be said, perhaps, that everything must have a beginning. Doubtless there are many ways of growing old.”

OLD age is not a disease, remarks Dr. Delbet; it is a physiological phenomenon. In a rather brutal way of putting it, we may say that its cause is birth; for in all pluricellular organisms, birth has death as its corollary, and old age is the road that leads thither. He continues:

“It would be highly interesting to know why magnesium diminishes with old age. There can hardly be more than two hypotheses; either an insufficiency of it is taken in with the food, or the cells have become incapable of fixing it. Neither hypothesis is satisfactory.

“If the former were true, it would suffice to eat enough magnesium to become immortal, which is absurd.

“If the second were exact, there would be no use in taking more magnesium; but it was the effect of doing this very thing that led us to undertake these researches.

“We may perhaps say, using (or possibly abusing) a Justly celebrated formula, that the elective power of fixation possest by the cells diminishes progressively before disappearing, so that during a certain period their power is reduced, tho not abolished, and they are then capable of utilizing the magnesium when supplied to them in excess.

“It is during this period that the absorption of magnesium in supplementary quantities would be of the greatest advantage.”

Source: The Literary Digest for September 20, 1930

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