SIGNED. The Biology of Death. Being a Series of Lectures Delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston in December 1920 by Pearl, Raymond - 1922

Philadelphia and London: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1922. First edition.

MONOGRAPH ON THE PHYSIOLOGY OF AGING BY FOUNDER OF BIOGERONTOLOGY--SIGNED.

13x20 cm hardcover, burgundy cloth binding, gilt title to spine, inscribed front free endpaper, "To Esther Pearl Matchett/ with warmest regards/ from her friend/ Raymond Pearl/ 22 November 1922." 275 pp, 64 illustrations in text. Corners bumped, spine ends rubbed, binding tight and pages unmarked; very good in custom archival mylar cover. EDITOR'S ANNOUNCEMENT. "Biology, which not long ago was purely descriptive and speculative, has begun to adopt the methods of the exact sciences, recognizing that for permanent progress not only experiments are required but that the experiments should be of a quantitative character. It will be the purpose of this series of monographs to emphasize and further as much as possible this development of Biology. Experimental Biology and General Physiology are one and the same science, by method as well as by contents, since both aim at explaining life from the physico-chemical constitution of living matter. The series of monographs on Experimental Biology will therefore include the field of traditional General Physiology. Jacques Loeb, T. H. Morgan, W. J. V. Osterhout." CONTENTS: I. The Problem; II. Conditions of Cellular Immortality; III. The Chances of Death; IV. The Causes of Death; V. Embryology and Human Mortality; VI. The Inheritance of Duration of Life in Man; VII. Experimental Studies on the Duration of Life; VIII. Natural Death, Public Health, and the Population Problem. GARRISON-MORTON 137. The author, after reviewing evidence, concludes that unicellular organisms, as well as germ cells of multi-cellular animals, are all immortal. RAYMOND PEARL (1879- 1940) was an American biologist, regarded as one of the founders of biogerontology. He spent most of his career at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. In 1908 Max Rubner observed that mammals of different size and longevity had equal mass specific metabolic output. Pearl (like Rubner) also asserted that maximum life span is inversely proportional to basal metabolic rate. Pearl accepted Alexis Carrel's erroneous ideas that normal somatic cells don't age, and that aging must therefore be due to dysfunction at the body level. Pearl speculated that lifespan was limited by vital cell components that were depleted or damaged more rapidly in animals with faster metabolisms. Denham Harman's free-radical theory of aging later provided a plausible causal mechanism for Pearl's hypothesis. The Rate of Living Hypothesis enjoyed prominence as one of the foremost theories of aging for nearly 50 years. However, when modern statistical methods for correcting for the effects of body size and phylogeny are employed, metabolic rate does not correlate with longevity in mammals or birds. ESTHER PEARL MATCHETT co-authored with Raymond Pearl Reference Handbook of Food Statistics in Relation to the War (1918).