Richard M. Smith – författare

Debates on policy concerning medical care and social welfare of the elderly become ever more pressing, and many of the assumptions on which they are based are now open to question. This study sets out to provide a historical perspective on the economic, medical, class and gender relations of the elderly, which until now have received relatively little attention. In particular, the position of the elderly is linked to the fundamental issues of health, disability and medical care. With attention currently focused on the setting of the retirement age, community and family care, and pensions, as well as wider debates on the rights of the elderly, this volume aims to supply a historical context for such issues.

These essays in Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle present detailed case studies from English rural communities over the period 1250-1850, these essays reveal that much land was transferred between living persons who were related neither by blood nor by marriage and that kin were often not the only members of work groups or assistance networks in the countryside. Although the focus is on the strata of English society below the landed aristocracy and the urban merchant elites, the preoccupation with those holding land whether under freehold or customary or copyhold tenure is tempered by essays that investigate the economic problems in the lifecycles of the property less or those unable through, for example, illness or age to work and manage their property.

This text is a treatise drawing together and critically examining the current explosion of experimental and clinical research on the metabolism, nutrition, pharmacology, toxicology, pathology, neuropsychology, and developmental neurobiology of trace elements.

F. Macfarlane Burnet I have been an interested onlooker for many years at research on the biology of trace elements, particularly in its bearing on the pas­ toral and agricultural importance of copper, zinc, cobalt, and mo­ lybdenum deficiencies in the soil of various parts of Australia. More recently I have developed a rather more specific interest in the role of zinc, particularly in relation to the dominance of zinc metalloenzymes in the processes of DNA replication and repair, and its possible significance for human pathology. One area of special significance is the striking effect of zinc deficiency in the mother in producing congenital abnormalities in the fetus. The fact that several chapters in the present work are concerned with this and other aspects of zinc deficiency is, I fancy, the editors jus­ tification for inviting me to write this foreword. In reading several of the chpaters before publication, my main impression was of the great potential importance of the topic of trace metal biology in both its negative and positive aspects-the effects of deficiency of essential elements and the toxicity of such pollutants of the modern world as lead or mercury mainly as or­ ganic compounds.