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The subject of present day history is technique, not man. Technique and its progress are based on the repression of death and on the illusion of a disease-free life. As a consequence, the individual has become unable to accept pain and death as components of reality. This is especially true as far as the elderly are concerned, who are often abandoned by the system. The universalism of technique is absorbing civilization: the elderly know that it is perfectly useless to want either to stop or to shift such a trend, and that complete submission is the price to be paid for the progress of technique. When the current malaise became the measure to medical progress, anthropological research discovered that only the individual as such is fully conscious of his needs and of what is necessary for his own well-being.