Signs of the Times

with contributions from Frederick C. Swartz, Dick Hallgren

The San Francisco Chronicle

Frederick C. Swartz, M. D. as reported by Dick Hallgren in The San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco, California

A Michigan doctor debunked the "so-called infirmities of age" in a hard-hitting speech before more than 4000 family doctors here. ... The forgetful mind, the doddering gait, the shaky hand —these, said Dr. Frederick C. Swartz of Lansing, are caused by the lack of physical and mental exertion and not the passage of time. "There are no diseases caused by the mere passage of time," he told the family doctors, here for the American Academy of General Practice convention at Civic Auditorium.

Our present concept of the "aging process" must be shattered and our "already brainwashed oldsters" made to see the nature of their ailments, he declared. ... "The fatal concept that 'debilities' come with age and at 65 one is 'over the hill' condemns the oldster to a period of ever-narrowing horizons," he asserted, "until the final sparks of living are the psychoneurotic concerns with the workings of his own body."

Dr. Swartz, an internist who spent four years at the Mayo Clinic, ... stressed in his speech and during an interview [that time] is "a measure, not a force. Aging, although it represents an accumulation of time units, is still also a measure, not a force."

He said he was not just concerned with prolonging age, but enhancing, deepening it.

Forgetfulness and confused mentalities, he said, "result largely from the lack of attention and failure to concentrate, and a loss of motivation." But this is preventable if "we encourage some habits of study learned in school. Some serious reading and thinking should be a part of one's daily life." If this doesn't take place, he said, the "narrowing of mental horizons" gets to the point where old people are no longer interested in ideas, but spend their time "talking about ... pains."

He said retirement "by the clock is totally untenable from a physician's standpoint."

The situation varies from industry to industry, but when individuals "have grown with the years, retirement is a waste of human resources." It often, he said, ... takes away a "man's reasons for living."

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