{"id":5151,"date":"2012-10-15T05:00:16","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T10:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/?p=5151"},"modified":"2022-03-21T14:59:18","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T19:59:18","slug":"5151","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wholehealthchicago.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/15\/5151","title":{"rendered":"You, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in the 19th<\/sup> century, the physician and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.<\/a> wrote the cheerful poem \u201cThe Deacon\u2019s Masterpiece or The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.\u201d The poem tells of a deacon who wanted to build a perfect shay, a popular two-wheeled carriage drawn by a horse, one that would last 100 years. He did so, using the finest materials and craftsmanship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And indeed his shay did endure a full century and then–literally to the day–it fell apart, virtually all at once. There was no single problem at the end of the shay\u2019s 100 years; it just sort of dissolved into itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then of a sudden it \u2014 ah, but stay,
I\u2019ll tell you what happened without delay\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideally, each of us has the potential to start life a lot like the deacon\u2019s masterpiece shay, functioning smoothly with just a few glitches along life\u2019s road, rolling on with the years in good health until finally, in our 80s, 90s, or 100s, our bodies give out. To have lived a life like this–being born, maturing to adulthood, growing old, and then without a multiplicity of chronic illnesses dying at an advanced age–is more prosaically called \u201cthe rectangularization of a lifespan.\u201d\u00a0 To see what\u2019s meant by that, look at the graph below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n