Читать книгу Pathy's Principles and Practice of Geriatric Medicine - Группа авторов - Страница 22

A great deal of modern geriatric medicine can be attributed to the United States. Although American writers in the nineteenth century, such as Dr Benjamin Rush, had published on the subject of old age, the real impetus for advance came later when a young medical student, Ignatz Nascher (1863–1944), an immigrant to America from Vienna, was taken to an almshouse to see some interesting cases. An old woman hobbled up to the medical teacher with a complaint. The class was told that she was suffering from old age and that nothing could be done for her. This remark impressed him so strongly that after qualification, he took up the study of the diseases of old age. His lifetime work on the subject resulted in his becoming known as the ‘father of geriatric medicine’. His publication of Geriatrics in 1916 was followed by others, including Dr Malford Thewlis, who published the first edition of his book, Geriatrics, in 1919; Dr Edmund Cowdry, whose Problems of Aging appeared in 1939; and Dr Alfred Worcester, who published a series of lectures in 1940 called The Care of the Aged, the Dying, and the Dead. Dr Nathaniel Shock, in 1951, published the first edition of his classification of geriatrics and gerontology but pointed to the scarcity of material. In 1942, the American Geriatrics Society was formed with a membership of physicians, and in 1945 the Gerontological Society of America was created with a multidisciplinary membership. Each of the societies produced its own journal in 1946. Unfortunately, this momentum for change was not sustained, partly because physicians saw little attraction in the subject. Interest was not reignited until the 1960s, when Medicare and Medicaid were introduced.

Thus, it was that leadership and instruction in modern geriatric medicine in the post‐war era passed to the United Kingdom, where the achievements of a handful of pioneers were becoming known.