[Social medicine aspects of increasing longevity and aging]

In all highly industrialized nations the survival curve shows a tendency towards "rectangulation", i.e. forming a plateau with a following decline in the elder ages. The life span remains unchanged as a specificity of the human genus. Morbidity in old age shows the same tendency to rectangulation. The majority of old people today are far more vital and healthy than in the past. Increasing longevity, persisting vitality in old age, in connection with acceleration and postponement of the menopause, is a cultural process of a comprehensive nature and shows the historicity of the human body.