History of the Self: Aging
Throughline
The Quest for Eternal Youth
This chapter explores the public fascination with eternal youth, driven by early 20th-century scientific breakthroughs. It focuses on the pioneering work of Eli Mechnikov, who treated aging as a disease and sparked societal conversations about longevity and quality of life.
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The
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French morning newspaper Le Matin carried a huge headline in large block letters all across the front page. And it said, Vive la vie, long live life.
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Underneath that headline, it said things like,
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L'élixir de l'éternelle jeunesse. The
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elixir of eternal youth.
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L'institut des miracles. The
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institute of miracles. La
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vieillesse vaincue.
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Old age defeated. None
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of us should despair to see the year 2000. We'll reach the age of the Patriarchs and Monsieur Mechnikov will be damned only by heirs or fortunes.
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Eli Mechnikov had captured the world's attention. For millennia, people had tried to evade death, seeking cures in things like mercury, gold, powders, liquids. But now they had a new tool. Science. And it was miraculous. There were new vaccines. X-rays had just been invented. You could now see what had once been invisible. And Metchnikov had helped to make that happen.
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He was very famous. He was one of the most famous scientists in the world. Eli
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Mechnikov was hardcore. The man drank cholera in the name of science. He injected himself with disease, and he tested the body's power and its limits. Later in his career, his work on the immune system would win him a Nobel Prize. When the world was sick, Medjnikov tried to cure it. And he made sure people knew. He loved the journalists.
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He never turned them away. And they loved him even more than he loved them. And they followed him around and they took down his every word. And
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his message was
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clear. He thought that a solution to everything was science. So of course, science was going to solve aging as well. Aging
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is a disease that should be treated like any other.
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No one had studied aging scientifically before. And here was this famous scientist saying he wanted to take it on. But Metchnikov didn't just want to study aging. He wanted to cure it. This
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became for him like a new mission. Science
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alone can lead suffering humanity into the right path.
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Free the world from this terrible affliction. And
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the world ate it up. Entire
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sacks of letters that piled up in the mailroom was stuffed with letters from people who didn't want to die. Nobody likes to die. Nobody
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likes to see their friends and family die. So we want to extend the lifespan as much as possible. People nowadays want to remain ageless. We can delay
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aging.
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It's one of the foundational questions in science. We can stop aging.
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How long can we live? We keep What is it exactly we're looking for? I don't know what I want to do. Living to 200? Are we looking to living to, you know, 95 with our senses and being active and in control? I think the most important thing to me is maintaining my
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mobility. I would love to, like, renovate a house. I
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think I want to travel more. Traveling as
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much as I can.
Defeating old age? In 1899, Elie Metchnikoff woke up in Paris to learn he had done just that. At least, that's what the newspaper headlines said. Before long he was inundated with mail from people begging him to help them live forever. The only problem? He didn't know how to do it.
At the time, Metchnikoff was one of the world's most famous scientists. And he believed aging was a disease he could cure. He dedicated his life to that quest, spending his days interviewing centenarians, pulling gray hair out of colleagues and old dogs, and boiling strawberries — all in the pursuit of eternal youth. If you've ever had yogurt for breakfast, you likely have Metchnikoff to thank. (This episode first ran as The Man Who Cured Aging)
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At the time, Metchnikoff was one of the world's most famous scientists. And he believed aging was a disease he could cure. He dedicated his life to that quest, spending his days interviewing centenarians, pulling gray hair out of colleagues and old dogs, and boiling strawberries — all in the pursuit of eternal youth. If you've ever had yogurt for breakfast, you likely have Metchnikoff to thank. (This episode first ran as The Man Who Cured Aging)
Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices
NPR Privacy Policy
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