Abstract
THE conception of søcial medicine, which has been the subject of several recent addresses by leading medical men, was, as Prof. Major Greenwood has pointed out in a Chadwick Lecture (Lancet, March 13, 1943, pp. 325–328), inherent in the teaching of Hippocrates. In those early days the training of the medical student was a much more personal matter than it is to-day. The student studied with his master, much as he did in the days of our grandfathers; he learned, as medical students of a century ago still did, much about the mode of life of his patients; and medical opinion is nowadays rediscovering the value of this method of approach. It is coming into line with the similar recent movement among biologists, who have learnt that the organisms which they study cannot be fully understood unless they are studied as beings which are inseparable from the surroundings in which they live. It is being recognized by medical men that the individual human patient must indeed be studied as an individual; sympathetic insight into his peculiarities is as important as, and sometimes more important than, knowledge of the malady from which he is suffering; but the group to which he belongs must also be studied, and also all the conditions which civilization imposes upon both the individual and the group. It is the task of social medicine to study such problems as these. Their variety and importance have recently been emphasized by Prof. J. A. Ryle (Brit. Med. J., Nov. 20, 1943, p. 633), who is professor of social medicine at Oxford and head of the first Institute of Social Medicine to be established in Great Britain. A similar department has recently been created by the University of Birmingham, and it would appear that the University of Edinburgh is moving in the same direction with the appointment of Prof. F. A. E. Crew to the chair of public health (see NATURE, March 25, 1944, p. 371).
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Social Medicine. Nature 153, 443–444 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/153443a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/153443a0
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