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Show Hope Revived for An Elixir Thai Will Prolong Life Span NEW YORK. Man's oldest, ever-recurrent dream an elixir for prolonging life has been revived. It came about at the closing session ses-sion of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Cortisone may be the answer. At least, the revival of longer-life hope stemmed from studies of cortisone cor-tisone made at the University of Utah. Cortisone is a new hormone that stops the pain of rheumatoid arthritis arthri-tis and helps half a dozen other diseases. dis-eases. The report that it might be a key to keeping certain body tissue younger and lengthening the life span was made by Dr. Thomas F. Dougherty, tisue structure specialist special-ist at the university. One of the few known facts about growing old is a change in those parts of the body known as connective connec-tive tissues. These tissues are, in effect, the walls and girders of all the body's organs. They permeate the skin, vital organs, bones and form the covering of blood vessels. In aging, these tissues become more fibrous. This process, Dr. Dougherty said, .--appears to be slowed down by cortisone. Connective Connec-tive tissues are apparently one of the key structures in long life. Arthritis Is an example of connective connec-tive tissues gone WTong. The Utah experiments on mice show clearly, Dr. Dougherty said, that cortisone is an antihistamine. It does not work by the same mechanism mech-anism as the now popular antihistamines antihista-mines for common colds and allergies. aller-gies. They counteract the histamine hista-mine which the human body naturally nat-urally manufactures. This histamine hista-mine is a product of broken down proteins. |