The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine has just published the results of a study correlating college major with longevity. Researchers at Queen's University in Northern Ireland examined the medical records and death rates of 8,367 men who attended Glasgow University between 1948 and 1968. The results are summarized here. There will be those who take issue with the white maleness of the subject pool, and there will also be those who say that what was true of Scottish men in the mid-twentieth century cannot be generalized to anyone--Scottish, male, or other--today. Be that as it may, it is still interesting to discover that students studying medicine lived the longest, and that those majoring in the liberal arts and social sciences died youngest; that theology majors were most likely to kill themselves, and that medical students--longlived as they were--drank themselves to death more than anyone else. Correlations are hardly causations. But it is interesting nonetheless to notice that the softer the studies, the shorter the lives. In more ways than one, it seems, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Thanks to reader Fred R. for the link.