ABSTRACT
In Western culture human ageing is seen as a process in which the body and the lifecourse are closely related in two significant ways. First, there is the issue of the biological finitude of the human body: increase in life expectancy means that more human beings than ever before grow old and death in old age is increasingly regarded as the norm. ‘Dying on time’ in hospital is in Western societies, and increasingly on a global level, regarded as the predictable terminus of a lifecourse of 70-90 years-the ‘image of death alone in a modern hospital’ (Seale 1995: 192). Second, this means that the biblical ‘three score years and ten’ are increasingly a reality rather than a pious ideal. The traditional imagery of the human lifespan as a series of ages or stages which decorated the walls of churches and the margins of sacred and secular books, for example in the Middle Ages (Dove 1986; Sears 1986), is no longer a sign of pious hope but a demographic reality.
