History, 20th Century

Publication Title: 
Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology

The idea that putrefaction of the stools causes disease, i.e., intestinal autointoxication, originated with physicians in ancient Egypt. They believed that a putrefactive principle associated with feces was absorbed in to the general circulation, where it acted to produce fever and pus. This description of the materia peccans represented the earliest forerunner of our present notion of endotoxin and its effect.

Author(s): 
Chen, T. S.
Chen, P. S.
Publication Title: 
Experimental Gerontology

The field of toxicology adopted the threshold dose response in the early decades of the 20th century. The model was rapidly incorporated into governmental regulatory assessment procedures and became a central feature of chemical evaluation and assessment. The toxicological community never validated the capacity of this model to make accurate predictions throughout the remainder of the 20th century. A series of recent investigations have demonstrated that the threshold and linear dose response model failed to make accurate predictions in the low dose zone.

Author(s): 
Calabrese, Edward J.
Publication Title: 
Experimental Gerontology

Many years ago, Alex Comfort experimentally refuted Bidder's hypothesis that fish potentially were immortal. Later morphological and physiological studies, together with observations from fish populations in the wild, revealed that fish age in a way similar to that in other vertebrates. More recently, assessments of the age of fish have been revised, and have shown that some species live much longer than was estimated.

Author(s): 
Woodhead, A. D.
Publication Title: 
American Journal of Human Biology: The Official Journal of the Human Biology Council

Frontier populations provide exceptional opportunities to test the hypothesis of a trade-off between fertility and longevity. In such populations, mechanisms favoring reproduction usually find fertile ground, and if these mechanisms reduce longevity, demographers should observe higher postreproductive mortality among highly fertile women.

Author(s): 
Gagnon, Alain
Smith, Ken R.
Tremblay, Marc
VÈzina, HÈlËne
ParÈ, Paul-Philippe
Desjardins, Bertrand
Publication Title: 
Biochemistry and Cell Biology = Biochimie Et Biologie Cellulaire

My desire as a young endocrinologist to improve my clinical skills through a better knowledge of hormone chemistry led me to serendipitous discoveries and unexpected horizons. The first discovery, published in 1967, revealed that peptide hormones are derived from endoproteolytic cleavages of larger precursor polypeptides. It was the foundation of the prohormone theory.

Author(s): 
ChrÈtien, Michel
Publication Title: 
Progress in Clinical and Biological Research
Author(s): 
Darby, W. J.
Publication Title: 
Biochemical Society Transactions
Author(s): 
Hales, C. N.
Desai, M.
Ozanne, S. E.
Crowther, N. J.
Publication Title: 
U.S. News & World Report
Author(s): 
Schultz, S.
Publication Title: 
Nutrition (Burbank, Los Angeles County, Calif.)

In millennia past, and until recently, among hunter-gatherers and like populations, in all populations, in measure, down through the ages, the securing of sufficient food was life's primary purpose. Virtually all people were physically very active during early life and later in their everyday occupations.

Author(s): 
Walker, Alexander R. P.
Walker, Betty F.
Adam, Fatima
Publication Title: 
Science of aging knowledge environment: SAGE KE

Caloric restriction has resulted in a consistent robust increase in the maximal length of life in mammalian species. This article reviews significant advances over the long history of research on calorie restriction and longevity.

Author(s): 
Masoro, Edward J.

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - History, 20th Century