Senility and Chronic Malnutrition

Dylan Thomas, in my view, expresses the only appropriate attitude toward senility and premature death. My inclusion of a brief portion of this poem represents a triumph of Orthomolecular medicine for one elderly man. A few weeks ago, by the side of a pool in Hawaii, C.P., on discovering I would participate in this conference on memory and aging, recited the entire poem. In 1960 he had completed 16 years of chronic invalidism, crippled, in pain, prematurely aged, and his memory so shattered he could not have recited any poem. That year he began to take 3 grams of nicotinic acid daily. Within two weeks he was well and has remained normal except for a brief episode in 1962 when he went on a vacation in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and forgot to take this vitamin with him. Within one week all his symptoms began to recur. By the time he reached home and was able to take nicotinic acid again he was as ill as he had been in 1960. Within a few days he was again well.