ABSTRACT
The promise of an elixir that would not merely prolong life but actually breach the boundary between youth and age has long been a preoccupation of myth and science. However, in late-nineteenth-century Britain, the fantasy aligned with a larger cultural shift that saw visible signs of aging through the distorting lens of “degeneration” and devolution anxieties. At the same time, as the physiological processes of aging began to be better understood, scientists and novelists dreamed of subduing the depredations of time.
