a faint notion of what dramatic art is." With the 1913 book Cum putem mări cantitatea de vieață și Paradoxele longevității ("How Me May Enhance Life Quantitatively, and The Paradoxes of Longevity"), Sterian produced a more radical critique of degeneration theory, proposing a new take on human evolution. He hypothesized that modern man was an ape species that had suffered adaptation to syphilis, which, in his reading, meant increased intelligence. Although he believed that syphilitic infection was a "civilizing hero", Sterian noted that the modern form of the epidemic needed to be kept in check. The book mainly insisted on solutions for the increase of man's lifespan. During the research phase, Sterian offered free consultations to all of Bucharest's centenarians. His overall conclusion was that, through control of one's effort and cultivation of one's intellect, people could live up to age 124. World War I and after During early 1914, Sterian renounced his Conservative membership and joined the National Liberal Party, adhering to its Bucharest branch. In summer of that year, which was shortly before the start of World War I, La Presse Médicale published his French-language essay on the supposed medical hazards of asphalt concrete. Sterian argued that, being impossible to sweep clean, asphalt created unhygienic dust, and also warned that asphalt roads had a serious risk of structural collapse. During the following two years, in still-neutral Romania, he returned to his literary work, this time published in Romanian. Tout pour l'enfant was translated as Copilul ("The Child"), and bound together with Sterian's second comedy, O invenție ciudată ("A Strange Invention"). Following Romania's entry into the war, Sterian joined the medical officers' corps of the Second Army, becoming a Major on April 1, 1917, and a Lieutenant Colonel exactly four years later. He earned distinction with his work in combating typhus, contracting the disease himself and publishing his observations in 1918, when other articles of his also saw print in Ionescu-Caion's magazine, Cronicarul. The year also marked his son Paul's debut in literature, at age 14. Decommissioned and promoted to reserve Colonel on October 1, 1924, Sterian returned to his native city in April 1926 to give a lecture on social medicine and social hygiene—this enterprise was sponsored by the Cultural League for the Unity of All Romanians. Having built himself a townhouse at his old home on Bibescu-Vodă, he joined a protest movement of the Bucharest property-owners against