After touching on the cure and prevention of parasitic disease,
Professor Schafer discussed the question whether the phenomena of senescence and death were a natural and necessary sequence to the existence of life. He could not admit that the researches of Metchnikoff fur- nished conclusive evidence of the indefinite prolongation of life. It was only in the sense of its propagation from one generation to another that we could speak of its indefinite con- tinuance. We could only be immortal through our descendants. There was no escape from the universal law : "All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity." If ever the time should arrive when men came to regard this change as a simple physiological process, as natural as the oncoming of sleep, the approach of the fatal shears would be as generally welcomed as it is now abhorred. But such a day was still distant. "Let us," he concluded, "at least hope that, iu the manner depicted by Dilrer in his well-known etching, the sunshine which science irradiates may eventually put to flight the melancholy which hovers bat-like over the termination of our lives, and which even the anticipation of a future happier existence has not hitherto succeeded in dispersing."
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