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This article first of all examines the difficult and infrequent relation between the study of old age and of gender relations. The author insists on the bio-social nature that such a report must necessarily have. Stephen Katz then illustrates this proposition with an analysis of the subjects studied by Charcot, the old ladies who were the subject of his “Clinical conferences on the illnesses of extreme old age” ? one of the foundation stones of modern geriatrics. In fact we see in Charcot the importance of the deterioration of the female body, which is often ignored in work on gender as if it was a taboo subject. Which is an obstacle to any dialogue with studies on old age.