Zahlen, bitte! – How do you live to be 152 years old?
For centuries, people have been amazed by apparent Methuselahs who live to be well over 110 years old – Science takes a more sober view of the cases.
The dream of a long life inspires many people. They take lots of pills, do a lot of sport or have genetic tests to detect age-related weaknesses. Some simply live longer and become super-agers or supercentenarians – as soon as they reach the age of 110.
Videos by heise
The phenomenon is not new: the Bible already reported on people who reached a biblical age. In early modern times, there were some special cases in the United Kingdom. The manufacturer's son Friedrich Engels was already annoyed by the scam of pills that were supposed to guarantee longevity.
Scientists who take a critical look at the subject have recently investigated the "blue zones", where it is claimed that people grow particularly old.
152 years old thanks to a cream cheese breakfast
The most famous case is probably that of Thomas Parr, who was born in the county of Shropshire in 1483 and who allegedly lived to be 152 years and nine months old thanks to his diet of bread, cream cheese and onions while abstaining from alcohol. When the old man was "discovered" in 1635 by Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, that was also the end of him.
(Image:Â Unbekannter Maler um 1635, gemeinfrei)
Howard, an antique hunter, brought him to London and introduced Parr to King Charles I and his wife Henrietta Maria. Soon afterwards, "Old Parr" died and was autopsied by the royal physician Thomas Harvey - the discoverer of the circulation of blood. His diagnosis of the causes of death: fatty meat, wine and the bad London air. In his autopsy report, Harvey noted that organs such as bones would indicate a person of around 70 years of age.
After all, Parr, who died so suddenly in London, was given a grave in the "Poets Corner" of Westminister Abbey, donated by the king, because he had lived as a subject for 152 years under ten kings, as his gravestone notes. His portrait is well known because Parr, who was marketed as a living sensation, was painted in London by Peter Paul Rubens. After Parr's death, the poet John Taylor published "The Old, Old, Very Old Man", a rhymed description of Parr's life.
Old age more likely due to document fraud
After that, the late-comer married for the first time at the age of 80, then again at 122. He also fathered an illegitimate child at the age of 105. Historians who looked into the case suspect a false certification or a confusion of names.
Katherine Fitzgerald, Countess of Desmond, is a different case of longevity in this period. The Irish noblewoman is said to have lived from 1464 to 1604, which can be explained by the fact that the lands granted to her were to pass to another branch of the family after her death. The life-prolonging measure on paper was economically motivated.
The story of Parr was revived from 1840, when journalist and later publisher Herbert Ingram lost his license to sell a quackery called Morrisons Vergetable Pills. He promptly had a pharmacist make up his own mixture, which he called Parr's Life Pills and soon had produced on a large scale. Alongside the pill, he wrote down the life story of Thomas Parr under a pseudonym and justified his longevity by taking the pill in question.
Rip-off with age pill infuriates Engels
Parr's Life Pills were a patent medicine whose mixture was secret (patented), but which could be bought without a doctor's prescription. This infuriated Friedrich Engels. In 1845, he wrote in his classic "The Condition of the Working Class in England": "It is nothing unusual for the manufacturer of Parr's Life Pills to sell 20,000 to 25,000 boxes of these healing pills in a week – and they are taken, by this one for constipation, by that one for diarrhea, for fever, weakness and all kinds of ailments. As our German peasants, at certain seasons of the year, cupped themselves or had their blood drawn, so now the English laborers take their patent medicines to do themselves harm and to put money into the pockets of the manufacturers." Herbert Ingram made a fortune and was able to publish "The Illustrated London News". He later distanced himself from the pill business.
At the time when Engels complained about Parr's life pills, the Dutchman Geert Adriaans Boomgaard was just 57 years old. When he died in 1899, he was the first person with documented life data to live to be over 110 years old, setting a record as a super-ager. The emphasis here is on "documented data".
Today's hunt for age records
In 2005, computer scientist and futurologist Ray Kurzweil stated that he would swallow 250 pills a day and have six infusions a week in order to live as long as possible. His goal was to experience the "technological singularity", when human and machine intelligence are on an equal footing.
(Image:Â CC BY 4.0, Jay Dixit)
Many assumptions about supercentenarians, including that there are "blue zones" on Earth in which humans live longer, are doubted by scientists. The studies of Saul Newman from the Oxford Institute of Population Aging at the University of Oxford play a central role in this.
For the blue zones on the islands of Sardinia and Okinawa, for example, he found that the documented birthdates were largely incorrect and suggest pension fraud rather than a high life expectancy. For his work, Newman received the satirical Ig Nobel Prize in 2024 in the demography category, which is awarded for curious research. This again proves that serious research can go hand in hand with a humorous interpretation if people are first made to laugh and then to think, as the prize rules state.
So if you want to live to be 152 currently, you should either take plenty of pills or move to a place with sloppy population records.
(mawi)
