Never before in human existence have the aged been so numerous - and for the most part - healthy. In this important new book, two professionals, an anthropologist and a physician, wrestle with the complex subject of aging. Is it inevitable? Is it a burden or gift? What is successful aging? Why are some people better at aging than others? Where is aging located? How does it vary among individuals, within and between groups, cultures, societies, and indeed, over the centuries? Reflecting on these and other questions, the authors comment on the impact age has in their lives and work. Two unique viewpoints are presented. While medicine approaches aging with special attention given to the body, its organs, and its functions over time, anthropology focuses on how the aged live within their cultural settings. As this volume makes clear, the two disciplines have a great deal to teach each other, and in a spirited exchange, the authors show how professional barriers can be surmounted. In a novel approach, each author explores a different aspect of aging in alternating chapters. These chapters are in turn followed by a commentary by the other. Further, the authors interrupt each other within the chapters - to raise questions, contradict, ask for clarification, and explore related ideas - with these interjections emphasizing the dynamic nature of their ideas about age. Finally, a third "voice" - that of a random old man - periodically inserts itself into the text to remind the authors of their necessarily limited understanding of the subject.

Never before in human existence have the aged been so numerous - and for the most part - healthy. In this important new book, two professionals, an anthropologist and a physician, wrestle with the complex subject of aging. Is it inevitable? Is it a burden or gift? What is successful aging? Why are some people better at aging than others? Where is aging located? How does it vary among individuals, within and between groups, cultures, societies, and indeed, over the centuries? Reflecting on these and other questions, the authors comment on the impact age has in their lives and work. Two unique viewpoints are presented. While medicine approaches aging with special attention given to the body, its organs, and its functions over time, anthropology focuses on how the aged live within their cultural settings. As this volume makes clear, the two disciplines have a great deal to teach each other, and in a spirited exchange, the authors show how professional barriers can be surmounted. In a novel approach, each author explores a different aspect of aging in alternating chapters. These chapters are in turn followed by a commentary by the other. Further, the authors interrupt each other within the chapters - to raise questions, contradict, ask for clarification, and explore related ideas - with these interjections emphasizing the dynamic nature of their ideas about age. Finally, a third "voice" - that of a random old man - periodically inserts itself into the text to remind the authors of their necessarily limited understanding of the subject.

Stanley M. Aronson, M.D., the founding dean of Brown University's medical school, has been writing newspaper columns for more than a decade for two Rhode Island publications. His Medical Arts' commentaries, compiled in this volume, have graced the pages of The Rhode Island Jewish Voice & Herald with wisdom, humor and a compelling humanity. The columns take readers on a journey into the history, heroes, marvels and maladies of ancient and current medical practices, captured in engaging tales. This collection includes stories of Jewish Nobel Prize winners, Biblical and medical giants as well as notables from the Rhode Island and New York Jewish medical communities. Thus, you will read, through a medical, Jewish and universal perspective, of David and Goliath, the Biblical Miriam, the historic Lewis and Clark, Jonas Salk, Alexander Fleming, Metchnikoff, and Maimonides to name but a few, in these pages. Dr. Aronson also reflects on his own humble origins through recollections of growing up in a Jewish immigrant family in Brooklyn. He then broadens the experience to an examination of exile, from the Mosaic era to the present. The commentaries are leavened with the wit and wonder of what were often "perilous" medical encounters, hence the title of this collection. It includes chapters on clinical cases in the Scriptures, the evolution of Judaic medicine, Jewish physicians, the historic development of hospitals, Diaspora and disease, and medical curiosities and customs. The author's penchant for the odd detail ("And He smote them with what?) as well as his innate curiosity ("Jonas Salk, sleuth") and questing spirit ("Lewis and Clark: The Lost Tribes of Israel") illuminate this work.