I became a geriatric gastroenterologist 28 years ago (to clarify any ambiguity, the term “geriatric gastroenterologist” refers to an individual interested in digestive disease in the elderly rather than an elderly person interested in digestive disease – although I will soon qualify for both). During this time a succession of slim volumes, all called something like “ageing and the gastrointestinal tract”, have appeared (again to clarify, aging is the same as ageing but the latter is English spelling, the former is the way the rest of the world spell it). At first, these slim volumes were either written by gastroenterologists who knew little about elderly patients or by geriatricians who knew little about gastroenterology. I often wondered why these slim volumes appeared. I imagined them, like the collected works of minor Edwardian poets, to be a (very) minority interest. The latest of …