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Medicine at the Extremes of Life

Medicine at the Extremes of Life (Gresham College). A series of six lectures on medicine at one extreme of life, concentrating on some of the key diseases of old age.

Christopher Whitty CB FMedSci is Visiting Professor of Public Health at Gresham College. He is also Professor of Public and International Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
(from gresham.ac.uk)

1. Health and the Seven Ages of Man: Serious Ill Health in the Very Old and the Very Young
The lecture will explore why this reduction in deaths and serious disease in the period from early childhood to late old age has happened.

2. The Shape of Things to Come: Future Demography around the World
This lecture will consider the drivers of the shape of population structure ranging from the defeat of infectious diseases.

3. Suffer the Little Children: The Gradual Improvement in Child Health has Left Newborns Behind
This lecture will briefly outline the reasons for the fall in child deaths, and then examine in more detail what we can do to reduce neonatal mortality globally.

4. Keeping the Heart Young in an Old Body
This lecture will consider how keeping the heart relatively young in the elderly has been achieved in incremental steps, and the implications for other health problems.

5. Stroke in the Elderly: Slowly Retreating
The risk of stroke steadily increases with old age, but in relative terms both the risk of having a stroke and disability as a result of stroke are decreasing.

6. Dementia: At Risk of Being Forgotten?
As populations age, inexorably the burden of dementia, mainly a disease of ageing, is steadily increasing.