We are on the verge of a breakthrough in anti-ageing remedies. Stretched out before us is a blissful vista where our newly youthful selves frolic in perpetual prime. The only cloud dampening our spirits is the knowledge that we have been standing on this verge for at least 5,000 years already — which is, frankly, playing havoc with my arthritis.
As Easter celebrations remind us, the dream of defeating ageing and death is an ancient one — as too is the belief that victory is imminent. St Paul thought that the resurrection of Jesus presaged an all-out raising of the dead within his lifetime. Long before that, medical papyri show that the ancient Egyptians were working on an elixir of eternal youth (mummification was merely Plan B). Detailed records reveal that the first emperor of China, having unified that great land in 221BC, focused all its resources on achieving immortality.
Some might be tempted to see a great gulf between the magical thinking of ancient times and the methods of modern science. But this would be a mistake. For one, those civilisations were based on immense technical accomplishments in fields from metallurgy to medicine; their subjects had good reason to believe they were on the verge of further breakthroughs. Second, modern science is also replete with wild claims and false elixirs. In the 19th century, the Harvard professor Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard lauded the rejuvenating effects of injecting oneself with crushed animal testes; while the effects were entirely make-believe, his claims nonetheless helped launch endocrinology, the study of hormones. In the latter part of the 20th century, the double Nobel Prize-winning scientist Linus Pauling claimed that megadoses of vitamin C were a cure-all, briefly giving false hope to thousands.