The National Health Service continues to lead the world in innovative ventures. In the face of increasingly overwhelming odds the NHS is trying to coordinate its services towards the elderly, providing a range of care by dedicated people, usually with minimal financial backing. To be added to this range of services (inpatient, outpatient, day hospital, continence clinics, etc.) can now be added memory clinics. In 1983 the Geriatric Research Unit of University College Hospital, London, opened a memory clinic. The research work pioneered there inspired others and many similar clinics have started, including one in my own health district of Tower Hamlets, opened by the late Dr Isabel Moyes, and now based at the Royal London Hospital, Mile End.

It is obvious to all who deal with elderly people that the worry of developing memory loss and possibly dementia is very great indeed. Some of this worry stems from a knowledge of how the elderly mentally confused are looked after by the state. The mind’s eye picture of bewildered old people dressed in food and urine stained ill-fitting clothes wandering around in the absence of trained carers is so strong because it bears an uncomfortably close association to the truth. The other aspect, though, is the ignorance surrounding the whole area of memory loss and dementia and the fact that this ignorance leads to untold worry and concern.

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