CHAIRMAN'S OPENING REMARKS 



R. E. TUNBRIDGE, O.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. 

 Department of Medicine, University of Leeds. 



First of all, I know that it is your wish that I should thank 

 the Ciba Foundation, on your behalf, for giving us this 

 opportunity of meeting together to discuss the problem of 

 ageing. The Director wisely chose as the title of the Sym- 

 posium "Ageing — General Aspects". We have thus been 

 spared any etymological discussion on what is the meaning of 

 gerontology. During the course of our discussions we shall 

 wander frc the most general aspects of the problem to the 

 particular out I trust that even when we are discussing 

 minutiae we shall keep in mind the general problem of ageing. 

 Perhaps it is too much to hope that at the end of this Con- 

 ference we shall be able to define ageing precisely and clearly — 

 but possibly many of us would feel that a lot of fun had gone 

 out of life if the riddle were to be solved so easily. 



Is ageing a chronological term, merely reflecting the passage 

 of years, and if so, what years, or are the public right in assum- 

 ing, as they generally do, that ageing is synonymous with 

 senescence and/or decay? The concept of the elixir of life, like 

 the philosophers' stone and the alchemists' dream of the 

 transmutation of metals, has long served as a tremendous 

 stimulus to mankind, to higher flights of imagination or some- 

 times to derision. We shall not dwell upon these fantasies, 

 nor shall we deal with that other very important aspect of the 

 problem, what one might call the political, economic and 

 social aspects of ageing, of which we as citizens cannot be 

 unaware. We shall try, I hope, to confine ourselves to the 

 more biological aspects in an attempt to define, if it is possible, 

 the process of ageing. 



Is there an allotted span of life? Is there species specificity 

 with regard to the life-span? Is the length of life determined 



