Abstract
The 100th anniversary of an individual’s birth still bestows an aura, a mystique, as the centenarian is as close to immortality as a human can be. This special prestige has been afforded the imprimatur of scientific study by Baker [2], who found that centenarians represented a striking exception to the inverted U curve of status across the life-span in Western culture. Baker’s data, derived from factorial survey analysis, fit the postulate that there is an “American arc of life” that gives maximum prestige to middle age and least prestige to young and old persons. Centenarians, however, were given unique status nearly equal to that of middle-aged individuals (Fig. 17.1), because “like four leaf clovers or quintuplets, centenarians are rare.
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Katlic, M.R. (2011). Surgery in Centenarians. In: Rosenthal, R., Zenilman, M., Katlic, M. (eds) Principles and Practice of Geriatric Surgery. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-6999-6_17
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