[Ageing in contemporary Spanish medicine].

The author analyzes the position of Spanish medicine in the contemporary debate on age, leaning on for this in the written testimonies of the physicians from the ends of the XIXth century of the central decades of our century, showing their coincidence with the medical western literature of the time.

[Prophylaxis against aging in Spain during the first decades of the twentieth century].

This article analyzes the different attitudes toward the fight against old age held by medical professionals in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century. Three clearly differentiated states are identifiable: "helping them to grow old", "curing old age", and "adapting to old age". The final state saw the development of anthropological and social measures.

[Old age, a problem of today].

Old age has become a characteristic phenomenon in western societies today, gradually growing into a social, medical and anthropological problem. Individuals themselves as well as the various sanitary, administrative and governmental bodies, that is to say the whole of society, are called in to help resolve this problem. Old age today is not only a source of problems for both individuals and the community alike, but a real challenge to which it is difficult to respond.

[The calculation of probabilities as a basis for certainty in medicine].

Medicine underwent a serious crisis in the changeover from the 18th to the 19th century. Resorting to the calculation or probabilities as a means to providing Medicine with the desired precision and certainty was one of the most notable features of the remedies taken by doctors to emerge from this crisis. This resorting to the calculation of probabilities was very controversial and hotly debated at that time and we hope to show that this was indeed the case in France.