Recent Advances in Geriatric Medicine

Ageing is a natural process. In the words of Seneca;“Old age is an incurable disease”, but more recently,Sir James Sterling Ross commented: “You do not healold age. You protect it; you promote it; you extendit” [1]. These are in fact the basic principles ofpreventive medicine. Old age should be regarded as anormal, inevitable biological phenomenon. The studyof the physical and psychological changes which areincident to old age is called gerontology. The care ofthe aged is called clinical gerontology or geriatrics.Another aspect of gerontology is social gerontology which was born on the one hand out of the instincts of humanitarian and social attitudes and on the other out of the problems set by the increasing number of old people[2]. Experimental gerontology is concerned withresearch into the basic biological problems of ageing, into its physiology, biochemistry, pathology and psychology.