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Aims: To commemorate the centennial of the geriatrics, the authors present a review of the population aging, the elderly individual, the characteristics of the geriatric medicine, and its history. Source of data: A throughout review of the literature found on MedLine and LILACS, as well as textbooks, dissertations, thesis, and government directives was performed. Summary of the findings: Geriatrics is the area of medicine that cares for the health and treatment of diseases in old age, which works with physical, mental, functional and social aspects in the acute, chronic, rehabilitative, preventive and palliative care of the elderly. Geriatrics goes beyond "medicine centered on organs and systems", offering holistic treatment by interdisciplinary teams with the principal objective of optimizing functional capacity and improvement of quality of life and autonomy of the elderly, which make up the core of this medical specialty. Geriatrics, in daily assistance practice, works with particular questions such as: the heterogeneity of patients and of scenarios of care; concomitance of multiple diseases/disorders (plurimorbidity), including geriatric syndromes ("the giants of geriatrics"); difficulty of identifying all the problems (iceberg phenomenon); polypharmacy; fragility; vulnerability; the various losses that the elderly show; and terminality. Conclusions: Geriatrics refers to the medical specialty responsible for the clinical aspects of aging and for the various forms of health care necessary for the elderly. Because of the complexity allied to the aging process, geriatrics has become an intriguing, challenging and contemporaneous specialty. ; Objetivos: para comemorar o centenário da Geriatria, os autores apresentam uma revisão sobre o fenômeno do envelhecimento, o indivíduo idoso, as características da medicina geriátrica e um resumo da sua história. Fonte de dados: foi realizada uma revisão da literatura através de artigos localizados nas bases MedLine e LILACS, além de livros, dissertações, teses e diretrizes ...

Aims: This study aims to analyze appeals court orders requesting medicines from 2007 to 2011 in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil. It also seeks to classify the requested medicines by therapeutic class, prescription order (brand or generic name), presence on the National List of Essential Medicines (RENAME), and composition (combined or not).Methods: The analyzed judgments were available on the website of the Rio Grande do Sul Court of Justice (TJRS) from 2007 to 2011 under the heading "Medicines + elderly." Judgments analyzed in the study contained three or more medicine orders, which we classified by their therapeutic class.Results: This study analyzed 154 appeals court medicine orders. Most orders were madeby the elderly women (54.5%). The most requests were made in 2010 (N=45, 29.2%).Of the 22 RS cities involved, Santa Maria filed the most appeals (24.1%). Of the 46therapeutic classes found, antihypertensives were requested most frequently. Most ordersconsisted of brand-name medication (64.4%). We observed that 142 medicines (92.2%) appeared on the RENAME. Of these, 96 were prescribed using the standard dosage (67.6%), 27 using another dosage (19%), and 19 in combination with other drugs (13.4%).Conclusion: Although medication is available for free, the elderly seek to legally guarantee this right. Most court orders used the brand name of the medicine, which prevents the order from applying to the same medicine for public networks or government programs that require prescriptions using generic drug names.