Institutional and home-based health care provided for elderly people in northen Italy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

The project is aimed at the study of the condi- tions of elderly people in northern Italy in the last one hundred and fifty years, and specifically in an area (Brescia) of the Italian region of Lombardy. It moves from the review of clinical, administrative and organizational documentation available in archives and in health structures dedicated to the care of elderly people. The scanning of the historical sources permits the analysis of the de- velopment of the institutions devoted to elderly care, focussing on the economic and sanitary history of the structures dedicated to the assistance of the elderly in the Brescia district. Also investi- gated is the progress of home-based health care, so as to constitute a permanent observatory on the health dynamics of the elderly through time. The project also examines the evolution of the concept of “old age”.