Geriatrics – geriatricians
More advice and information
Geriatricians in Short Supply Aging Well 2011
Question for Dr. Stall
Specifically, I want to trace the historical development of Geriatrics from a time that it was just an area of interest to today when it is an actual subspecialty…
Response from Dr. Stall
You may find the following “matching quiz” helpful.
Of particular note is Cicero’s De Senectute, which might be considered the first formal discourse on the issues of old age.
Also, check out Roots of modern gerontology and geriatrics: Frederic D. Zeman’s “Medical history of old age” and selected studies by other writers, New York, 1979 ISBN: 0405118015 and Geriatrics by I.L. Nascher, ISBN: 0405118252
Quotations On Old Age – Matching Quiz
What was said…
1. Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
2. We must retrain the way we think, to define success in the more sublime terms of ability and competence, wisdom and experience.
3. Too many elderly people with small incomes skimp on food at a time when their health requires greater quantity, variety, and balance in their diets.
4. You don’t grow old; when you cease to grow, you are old.
5. In youth we say: I am immortal. In age we say: I die without having lived.
6. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eye, sans taste, sans everything.
7. To know how to grow old is the master-work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.
8. Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.
9. It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character and judgement; in these qualities old age is usually not only not poorer, but is even richer.
10. Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time.
11. …has rather strengthened my belief that the real work of life is done before the fortieth year and that after the sixtieth year it would be best for the world and best for themselves if men rested from their labours.
Who said it?
1. Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826 (letter to John Adams, August 1, 1816)
2. Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson 1902-1994 (from Toward A Meaningful Life, Aging and Retirement)
3. John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (Special Message to the Congress on the Needs of the Nation’s Senior Citizens, February 21, 1963; additional reference News Conference)
4. Charles Judson Herrich 1868-1960
5. Santiago Ramón y Cajal 1852-1934 (from Charlas de Café)
6. William Shakespeare 1564-1616 (from As You Like It, II, vii, 157)
7. Henri Amiel 1821-1881 (from Journal Intime, September 21, 1874)
8. Robert Browning 1812-1889 (from “Rabbi Ben Ezra”)
9. Cicero 106-43 BCE (from De Senectute (On Old Age))
10. Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 (from Society and Solitude – Old Age)
11. Sir William Osler 1849-1919 (from Aequanimitas, with Other Addresses (2nd ed.), Preface)
Answers 1. = 1. 2. = 2. etc.
Hope that helps.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rob Stall