Medicine, old age and public interest in historical perspective. The German case.

Abstract

This paper outlines the history of social disinterest on old people from the perspective of medical discourse since the end of the 18th century. The following thesis is proposed: since the Enlightenment medical discourse over illnesses associated with old age has been masked by the social valuation that dying is attributable to old age and old people could not make any great demands on medical assistance. Until the end of the 19th century it was theologians, not doctors, who were responsible for old people on the threshold to death. Around 1900 great interest arose in the problem complex "aging" and "rejuvenation" from the view point of bio-chemistry. But the associated cultural circumstances, namely a dominant social interest in youth and fitness, largely prevented an original medical interest in old people. This has only developed since the 1950s, not within the medical profession but in the "social" professions, primarily social work. From this perspective the application of Foucault's paradigm, in which old age, actually a social problem, is defined and addressed by medicine, in other words a "medicalization of old age", seems to be only conditionally meaningful as a conceptual framework for analysis.