One of the saddest commentaries on the medicine of the past can truthfully be said to be the neglect of the aged, as indicated by the scanty literature on the subject and the general apathy existing in the profession relative to the study of the normal changes as well as the diseases peculiar to advanced life. To the profession of France largely belongs the honor of laying the foundation for whatever we possess, fragmentary though it be, of senile pathology.
Prior to the beginning of this century those who wrote on the subject wrote, like Cicero, from a contemplative literary standpoint with the possible exception of the small treatises of Floyer, Welsted and Fisher. It remained for Pinel, in his elaborate treatise on "Clinical Medicine," published in 1815, the result of his vast experience in the Salpetrière Hospital, to furnish the nucleus of our present knowledge of senile pathol ogy.