Kultur: Thoughts in a Country Churchyard; Longevity in Antiquity

I HAVE HAD some more interesting responses to my article on the relationship of refined sugar to cancer. Several writers independently suggested that the reason there is more cancer today than in former times is that present-day people live much longer. Since cancer is primarily a disease of middle and old age, these writers claim, there simply weren’t enough people in former ages who lived long enough to develop this disease.

Longevity in Antiquity

What about really ancient times? If the claim that modern medicine has doubled our life span were true, then people in antiquity should have been uniformly dying in their thirties. Yet the Biblical “Book of Psalms” states: “The days of our years are three-score years and ten, / Or even by reason of strength fourscore years” (Psalms 90:10). A score is twenty years. Thus, the Biblical author believed that the normal life span was 70 years or, for those with a particularly vigorous immune system, around 80. How does this gibe with the notion that until the advent of modern medicine people only lived to around 35?

I had a dim recollection that many ancient authors lived to ripe old ages. So I got out my Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and looked at the birth and death dates for some ancient authors. I simply took the first 20 whose dates were known, and listed them chronologically, without skipping any.

1. Lao-tzu c. 604- 531 BC, age 73
2. Pythagoras c. 582-500 BC, age 82
3. Anacreon, c. 570-480 BC, age 90
4. Xenophanes, c. 570-475 BC, age 95
5. Simonides, c. 556-468 BC, age 88
6. Confucius, c. 551-479 BC, age 72
7. Heraclitus, c. 540-480, age 60
8. Themistocles, c. 528-462 BC, age 64
9. Aeschylus, 525-456 BC, age 69
10. Pindar, c. 518-438 BC, age 78
11. Anaxagoras, c. 500-428 BC, age 72
12. Pericles, c. 495-429 BC, age 66
13. Sophocles, c. 495-406, age 89
14. Empedocles, c. 490-430 BC, age 60 (committed suicide)
15. Euripides, c. 485-406 BC, age 79
16. Herodotus, c. 485-425 BC, age 60
17. Protagoras, c. 485-410 BC, age 75
18. Socrates, 469-399 BC, age 70 (executed)
19. Hippocrates, 460-377 BC, age 83
20. Thucydides, c. 460-400, age 60

If we average the life spans of these 20 great people of antiquity, we arrive at a figure of 74 years, right in the middle of the Biblical range. None of them died before age 60 and a few of them had their lives cut short by violent ends. Of course, I can’t say how typical these sages were compared to the average Athenian in the street. But these are the folks about whom we have some reliable records. I think this brief survey shows that many people in antiquity lived to what, even today, we would consider a decent old age.

During lifetimes of such a generous span, cancer would have shown itself. I remember reading that the average age at which cancer strikes is around 62 years. Many cancers occur even before this age. For metastatic kidney cancer, the average age is around 55. For oral cancer, the average age is 60. Thus, all of the above individuals lived long enough to get cancer. Yet, to my knowledge, there is no record that any of them developed the disease.

Could it be that cancer was just as rampant in ancient times as it is today, with the only difference being that it went undiagnosed? Some readers have proposed this idea. My view is this: the disease was definitely known, and it was just as definitely rare in most periods in human history. About one-quarter of tumors manifest externally. Pre-modern medical writers were fascinated by cancer and were on the lookout for malignancies. They had the ability to identify many types of cancer. However, they seldom had the opportunity to do so, due to the paucity of cases. Reports of cancer, and interest in the disease, began to increase, like an incessant drumbeat, throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries.

You get a feel for this by looking at old medical textbooks. I have texts about cancer dating to the late eighteenth century. But older medical books generally contain only passing references to cancer. To cite one example, The Practice of Medicine, by A.A. Stevens, MD, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is a comprehensive work on the full scope of medicine in the early 1920s. Yet in the course of over 1,000 pages, the book contains only two dozen references to cancer of all types. (By contrast, tuberculosis gets a solid 31-page description.) The description of lung cancer takes up one paragraph and states that the disease is “comparatively rare.” Out of nearly 90,000 autopsies, it states, only 130 cases of lung cancer were found. Breast cancer is not even mentioned, nor are most of the other types of malignancy that fill the cancer clinics today. Simply not there. In fact, the first comprehensive English textbook on cancer treatment was not published until 1940!

My conclusion is that although cancer is indeed a very old disease it was not very common in antiquity or until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The reason was not that people did not live long enough to develop the disease. Many did indeed live into their sixties, seventies and beyond. No, the reason is that cancer only took on epidemic proportions in the last 100 years or so. We therefore have to look to peculiarly modern conditions for the cause of this epidemic. And of these, the overall impact of sugar needs to be considered. I am not saying that sugar per se is carcinogenic. But the long-term impact of an excess of refined carbohydrates can be devastating to the body. This can manifest in a variety of ways. Burdening the pancreas with massive quantities of refined carbohydrates can lead to insulin resistance and “hyperinsulinemia,” or high blood sugar.

Eventually, this can develop into full-blown type II diabetes. Many people with a disturbed sugar metabolism are also afflicted with obesity, which is conventionally accepted as a predisposing factor for many kinds of cancer. Thus, the relationship between sugar and cancer can be indirectly mediated through long-term alterations in body chemistry.

For health reasons I suggest that readers limit their intake of refined carbohydrates. Evidence suggests that it will decrease your chances of developing a host of diseases, including some kinds of cancer.

—Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D.

References:

Dates of birth and death for authors from antiquity: Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Sixteenth Edition.

Average age of onset for metastatic kidney cancer: http://bonetumor.org/page64.html

Average age of onset for oral cancer: http://www.adha.org/oralhealth/oralcancer.htm