The Journal of Physiology

and group history, and ally themselves closely to Freud, believing that psychohistory is the fulfilment of his dream of solving the great cultural and historical riddles of mankind by his method. However, until psychoanalysis itself has been adequately evaluated, there can be no legitimate applied psychoanalysis. The psychohistorians make voluble claims for their new approach, but its impact on the history of medicine has so far been very slight. Ifit is such a remarkably rewarding technique, why does it form no part of academic medical history, and in Britain, for example, is almost totally ignored? It is claimed here that denigration not veneration of the elderly is the commoner attitude. The author's aim is to provide a historical perspective on ageing in order to promote a better understanding of the present-day problems it creates, and to provide a more positive approach to it. He does this by presenting a number of thematic essays which explore topics such as, 'Old age in French working-class culture', 'Geriatric medicine', 'Where the elderly lived and live', and 'Towards a new style of life'. France is chosen because, together with Sweden, it earliest had the highest proportion of aged, and because it developed an attitude to the elderly before the modem phenomenon of ageing. The work is liberally documented, but the text can be fully comprehended without the end-notes. Most of the material deals with the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but this is a useful contribution to a subject that is being greatly neglected by historians. Considerable attention is currently focused on the history of the child, the family, and the female, but the elderly should be the next to be rehabilitated historically.