This article examines oneaspect of Alzheimer's disease, which describesit as a ``memory disease''. In the specificcontext of urban Brazil this relatively newillness category, which is creating a certaintension with older concepts of senility, isseen within the changing world of the Country'smemory politics – and a changing culture ofaging – which create new values and new ways ofdealing with memory and its diseases. Animportant aspect of the older notion ofsenility is the way a person creatively and ina flexible way deals with life's stress andstrain. And part of this highly valuedflexibility is the capacity of forgettingnegative events, of ``letting go''. Theincapacity of this, not having ``flexible hips'',is one reason of becoming ill. It is not arguedthat a changing cultural context in Brazil iscreating a disease like Alzheimer's, but thatcertain memory practices help to explain, tolive and to contest traditional and new ways ofdealing with senility and that this process is adynamic one and still in the beginning inBrazil.