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Gerontology

Study of the biological, psychological, and social aspects of aging

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Takuya Omura · CC BY-SA 4.0

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While gerontology was initially grounded in biomedical perspectives, the transition to the biopsychosocial model marked a turning point in its evolution. This shift transformed gerontology from a discipline focused on a specific domain to an interdisciplinary field where knowledge from multiple domains is actively integrated to understand and address the complexities of aging across the lifespan. M. Powell Lawton, a psychogerontologist at the Geriatric Center of Philadelphia, was one of the first researchers to recognize the crucial importance of designing living environments tailored to the needs of older adults, particularly those with Alzheimer's disease. As an academic discipline, gerontology is relatively new. In 1975, the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology at the University of Southern California (USC) established the first doctoral, master's, and bachelor's degree programs in the field, formally institutionalizing gerontology as an independent area of study.

History

The oldest known gerontological manuscripts in the world date from the Islamic Golden Age. In The Canon of Medicine (c. 1025), Avicenna dedicated Thesis III to the care of the elderly, providing instructions on diet, exercise—including walking and horseback riding—and various remedies. The Tunisian physician Al-Jazzār (c. 898–980) authored Kitāb Ṭibb al-Mashāyikh, which addressed the pains, ailments, and health maintenance of older adults, covering sleep disorders, forgetfulness, methods to strengthen memory, and the causes of mortality in old age.

During the Renaissance, the physician Gabriele Zerbi (1445–1505) wrote Gerontocomia, scilicet de senum cura (1489), dedicated to Pope Innocent VIII. Considered the first treatise devoted exclusively to gerontology, it reveals a conception far broader than mere clinical intervention, encompassing hygiene, nutrition, exercise, emotional well-being, and disease prevention.

In the 19th century, Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874) is considered the first gerontologist in history. His work, Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale (1835), describes the principles that govern the process by which human beings are born, grow, and die, establishing for the first time aging as a process of development and not merely as deterioration.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the biologist Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov (1845–1916), awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1908 for his work on the immune system, coined the term "gerontology" in 1903, laying the foundations for the creation of this science. Shortly thereafter, in 1909, the physician Ignatz Leo Nascher introduced the term "geriatrics" to define the medical specialty focused on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases in older adults. In his work Geriatrics: The Diseases of Old Age and Their Treatment (1914), Nascher established a fundamental principle that still distinguishes modern gerontology: senescence constitutes a distinct physiological process, not a disease. By asserting that "senescence is not due to any cause" and that "disease is not always a causal or even essential factor," he laid the groundwork for the distinction between normal aging and pathological aging.

The consolidation of gerontology as an independent scientific discipline with international reach is largely due to the physician and gerontologist Vladimir Korenchevsky (1880–1959). In 1937 he founded the British Club for Research on Ageing, which in 1945 became the British Gerontological Society and later the British Society for Research on Ageing. That same year, with support from the Nuffield Foundation, he established the Oxford Gerontological Unit at the University of Oxford, a pioneering center for experimental gerontology. Largely due to his efforts, the International Association of Gerontological Societies was formed in Liège, Belgium, in July 1950, later renamed the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG). For these foundational contributions, the gerontological community widely recognizes him as the "father of gerontology".

In the second half of the 20th century, the gerontological psychiatrist Robert Butler (1927–2010) coined the term "ageism" in 1969 to denounce systematic discrimination based on age—a process of stereotyping and prejudice that, he argued, led to the social exclusion of older adults and stripped them of purpose and value in modern societies.

The most significant shift in gerontological thought was the gradual rejection of the traditional biomedical model. The gerontologist and physician Alex Comfort (1920–2000), in his work A Good Age (1976), argued that the greatest problem of old age is not physical decline, but the medical and social prejudices that marginalize older people and treat them as inferior or useless. Comfort dismantled numerous myths associated with old age using scientific evidence, demonstrating that much of the deterioration attributed to chronological age was in fact the result of disease, inadequate habits, social isolation, and cultural prejudices. Popularizing the fight against ageism initiated by Butler, A Good Age became a manifesto for active and dignified aging, advocating for autonomy, social participation, and full citizenship for older adults, and promoting the idea that maturity and old age should be lived with fullness, autonomy, mental health, social participation, and holistic well-being. For all these reasons, A Good Age is considered a key text of contemporary gerontology for having consolidated the shift from the traditional biomedical model to the biopsychosocial model that defines the discipline today.

Modern pioneers like James Birren began organizing gerontology as its own field in the 1940s, later being involved in starting a US government agency on aging—the National Institute on Aging—programs in gerontology at the University of Southern California and University of California, Los Angeles, and as past president of the Gerontological Society of America (founded in 1945).

With the population of people over 60 years old expected to be some 22% of the world's population by 2050, assessment and treatment methods for age-related disease burden—the term geroscience emerged in the early 21st century.

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