Geriatric medicine emerged from long-term care championed by Marjory Warren and contemporaries, who focused attention on the opportunities and rewards of assessing, treating and, in particular, rehabilitating older people resident in institutional care. Then as now, people in long-term care were generally beyond the remit of hospital medicine. From this rehabilitative initiative in long-term care, geriatric medicine has continually developed and in the process has become increasingly divorced from its roots. The present evolutionary state of the specialty could be summarized by the goals of concentrating on the early detection, treatment and rehabilitation of acute and chronic ill health, in an attempt to improve quality of life and reduce dependency.