BIBLIOGRAPHY
The most comprehensive historical study is G. J. Gruman,
A History of Ideas About the Prolongation of Life: The
Evolution of Prolongevity Hypotheses to 1800 (Philadelphia,
1966), with documentation and bibliographical lists; in most
libraries this work will be listed under “American Philo-
sophical Society,” (Transactions, N. S. 56, 9). The best his-
tory of gerontology and geriatrics is M. D. Grmek, On Aging
and Old Age (The Hague, 1958). An exhaustive series is
N. W. Shock, ed., A Classified Bibliography of Gerontology
and Geriatrics (Stanford, 1951ff.). See also G. J. Gruman,
“An Introduction to Literature on the History of Gerontol-
ogy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 31 (1957), 78-83;
and R. L. Grant, “Concepts of Aging: An Historical Re-
view,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 6 (1963),
443-78. On statistical concepts, see M. Spiegelman, Intro-
duction to Demography (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). On
theories of aging, see A. Comfort, Ageing: The Biology of
Senescence (New York, 1964). On prolongevity in China, see
J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge,
1954ff.). On Arabic medical alchemy, see P. Kraus, Jabir
ibn Hayyan, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1943); and O. Temkin, “Med-
icine and Graeco-Arabic Alchemy,” Bulletin of the History
of Medicine, 29 (1955), 134-53. On Latin prolongevity al-
chemy, see R. P. Multhauf, “John of Rupescissa and the
Origin of Medical Chemistry,” Isis, 45 (1954), 359-67; and
W. Pagel, Paracelsus (Basel and New York, 1958); and also
writings of A. G. Debus. On Enlightenment prolongevity,
see C. L. Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-
Century Philosophers (New Haven, 1932); and R. H.
Shryock, The Development of Modern Medicine (Phila-
delphia and London, 1936). On Fyodorov and a selection
from his writings, see J. M. Edie, et al., ed., Russian Philoso-
phy, Vol. 3, (Chicago, 1965), 11-54. On radical prolongevi-
tism, see R. C. W. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality
(New York, 1964); and A. Harrington, The Immortalist (New
York, 1969). See also J. M. D. Olmsted, Charles-Édouard
Brown-Séquard (Baltimore, 1946); P. B. Medawar, The Fu-
ture of Man (New York, 1960); and remarks by B. L. Strehler
in “Mortality Trends and Projections,” Transactions of the
Society of Actuaries, 19 (1967), D428-D493.
GERALD J. GRUMAN
[See also Alchemy;
Death; Health and Disease; Primitivism;
Progress; Sin and Salvation; Utopia.]
