Helping the Elderly to Live at Home

ONE of the interesting features of medical education is the continuing theme that runs through successive generations. If one reads the writings of the Ancient Physician, some five hundred years before Hippocrates, the theme is still the same as that of today. The prayer of Ebu-e-Maymoun in the twelfth century in Teheran contains the philosophy which we hope to instil into our students today. "O Lord, grant me an opportunity to improve aidI extend my training since there is no limit to knowledge. Help me to correct and supplement my educational defects as the scope of science and its horizon widen day by day. Give me the courage to realize my daily mistakes so that tomorrow I shall be able to see and understand in a better light what I could not comprehend in the dim light of yesterday. Bless me with a spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice, so that I can trust and heal Thy suffering servants and prevent and preserve health to the best of my ability and knowledge." In this volume to which speakers from not only the relatively well-endowed countries but also those from countries in which the medical problems are still immense and the proportions of trained medical men to the population at risk is still small there is a curious unanimity of opinioin. Indeed there is no international problem in which a similar common purpose exists. All medical men realise that medicine is a lifelong study. The advances in the last twenty-five years have brought this home to even the least enterprising. The issue is really how the medical school can best contribute to the continuing education of the medical graduates. The problem is not simply that of further scientific education. In a sense medical educators face a dilemma: "'how to educate men who are scientific in outlook and yet sensitive to many aspects of human life not amenable to laboratory analysis." This may seem impossible, but the continuing theme from the Ancient Physician through the ages seems to suggest that though no clear-cut solution is available a pragmatic solution for each generation will be found. The faculty, as a whole, must engage in the most radical kind of study of its own role. "This is to ponder on the mission of the medical school in its university setting and in the larger community. One must work out and state clearly the educational objectives …