ABSTRACTGeriatric medicine became a part of medical science in the middle of the nineteenth century, more than haifa century before ‘geriatrics’ was named, and a century before it was established in British health care. It was born in Germany along with ancient theories that ageing was in itself a disease, but was increasingly influenced by new pathological and physiological knowledge on ageing and disease, and further developed during the great French clinical era of the latter part of that century. As part of the development of this particular branch of medical science, a gradual categorisation of old age took place, with much credit to the Belgian statistician Quetelet, who may be regarded as the inventor of the category ‘the elderly’ defined by age. The developing biomedical images of old age were given much space in encyclopaedias, dictionaries and popular health literature after 1870. Therefore, the defined existence of old-age limits must also have influenced the legislators responsible for the first national Acts on old- age pension, which now celebrate their centenary.
Understanding diversity in later life through images of old age