We may see from the foregoing account that British physicians have played a major part in the history of geriatric medicine. Other countries have no counterpart to J H Sheldon of Wolverhampton, whose work on the social medicine of old age was so fundamental, or George Adams of Belfast, to whom we owe such a debt of knowledge about cerebrovascular disease in the aged, or to Marjory Warren and the other pioneers mentioned above. Long may this tradition continue.