Undeniably, the desire not to age is more or less a constant for most people throughout their life. Eternal youth should not be confused with the desire for immortality, in fact the latter deals with the theme of death. The desire not to age aims to maintain that golden age of life in which one feels at their best. After youth, the nostalgic memory of time that no longer exists comes into play. The desire to remain forever young is born of the fear of psychophysical decline even before the fear of death.
Myths and stories about eternal youth have been around throughout human history and are found in the literature of every era and of many civilisations. The most famous work is Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and of course the fairy tale of Peter Pan or the cult of beauty and youth of some historical figures such as Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria known as Princess Sissi shouldn’t be missed out. In ancient times we find the Holy Grail as a provider of eternal life through the healing of every wound or even the myth of Gilgamesh that deals with the theme many centuries before Christ.
The awareness of the ineluctable ageing that afflicts every living being makes this time even more fascinating.
The concept of eternal youth is not defined in medicine and in biology, but the theme of longevity has been studied for some time. Recent studies indicate that it will soon be possible to prolong the average life of humans to over one hundred years, thanks to genetic engineering and manipulation of the genetic code.
These days, we hear on the news about the spread of hibernation practices that would allow the body to come back to life hundreds of years later in the hope that scientific progress has reached sufficient levels to defeat diseases that are now fatal.
Plastic surgery touches the subject in its most superficial sense thanks to the techniques of body rejuvenation, which often tend to bring the individual’s appearance back to a condition more in keeping with the subject’s intellectual vitality. In this regard, in recent years there has been an increasing demand for medical procedures and cosmetic surgery that are no longer aimed at improving certain physical characteristics, but only for the purpose of rejuvenating the appearance or preventing ageing with antiageing medicine.