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I enjoyed Hirshbein's enlightening article on Osler's ideas about old age,¹ which reminded me of the approach to old age of another great physician of the 20th century and my mentor, William Dock.² Osler was the mentor of William Dock's father, George Dock, at the Univesity of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in the 1880s, and the two remained close friends.³

Dock's approach to old age was best illustrated in his classic article in 1971.⁴

To those about to die, old age seemed marvelous. But not to Socrates at 70, for Xenophon tells us that when he had been sentenced to die and his friends asked why he had not tried to defend himself at his trial, he said he preferred the lethal drink to old age, the sink into which all miseries flowed. . . . When Charles de Gaulle wrote "Old age is a shipwreck," I could have said that I . . . [Full Text of this Article]