Chapter 10 - Ageing and Aspirational Medicine

Summary

In the last three chapters we have discussed how the various embodied practices promoting sexual activity, personal attractiveness and bodily fitness have become aligned with the new ageing. We turn now to the fourth of Francis Bacon's ‘sciences for the good of the body’, namely medicine and its recent re-orientation toward ageing through the aspirational science of corporeal betterment. Although prolongevity has been a longstanding interest of medicine, what is distinct about late modernity is the growth in ‘rejuvenative’ technologies that go well beyond the homilies and the herbaria of past eras. As Forth has pointed out ‘what most clearly separates twentieth century bodily ideals from those of earlier periods is not the strong social emphasis that is placed on appearance and performance but the ever expanding technologies that allow one to alter one's body in hitherto unexpected ways’ (Forth 2010, 145). In this chapter we will explore the emergence and expansion within medicine and surgery of a widening variety of techniques that offer individuals, not so much treatments for their disease, as choices over their appearance. One key element in this search for enhancement is delivering a choice over how much ‘age’ individuals wish to display. The application of medicine (including surgery) to this particular task of corporeal enhancement is what we refer to as ‘rejuvenative medicine’.