Importance of studying History of Medicine

"The Past supplies the key to the Present and Future."

This is an old wisdom by an historian who understands the necessity of studying history from an utilitarian point of view.

          In the study of any branch of science, an acquaintance with the historical development of knowledge is an important element in a clear understanding of our present conceptions.

          This was also understood by a section of medical world and thousands of publications on the History of Medicine as a whole and its allied branches were written.

          History of medicine is much more than the history of small elite of doctors and medical scientists making great discoveries in laboratories. The patient is also very much part of the picture. Throughout history, health and disease have been matters of major concern which affected everyone and had a profound effect on the way people lived, what they ate and drank how they organized their private and public hygiene and healthcare, and how they coped - physically as well as spiritually - with pain, illness and death.

Consequently, the history of medicine studies the role of disease and healing in the day-to-day life of ordinary people. It covers the relations between patients and doctors and their mutual expectations, the variety of health-suppliers in the 'medical market-place', the social position of healers and their professional upbringing, and the ethical standards and expectations they were required to live up to. And it also covers the material history of the past, the study of the history of diseases and developments in palaeopathology (DNA analysis, etc).

We are all actual or potential patients, players on the health market, receivers and shapers of attitudes, rules and legislation affecting our health and healthcare. Being affected immediately, we are well advised to think about questions such as the following:

• How have people and civilizations in the past defined health, disease and quality of life? How have they experienced and understood phenomena such as disease, pain, death, how have they 'constructed' these phenomena and contextualised them?

• How were such responses related to ideas about mind and body, about the environment, about natural and supernatural causation, about moral and legal responsibility and blame?

• How did these ideas translate into science, research and practice, and what social, cultural and institutional implications did these have?

• How were 'healthcare systems' created and organized? How did 'scientific' medicine arise?

• What status did the practitioners or 'providers' of medical treatment enjoy? How did they arrive at their views, theories and practices?

• How did they communicate these to their colleagues and wider audiences? What rhetorical and argumentative techniques did they use in order to justify their practice and to persuade their patients that they were in good hands?

• How was medical authority established and maintained, and how were claims to competence justified?

• What new opportunities did the development of biomedicine create, and what were the ethical and legal issues medicine had to face?

The answers to these questions tell us something about the wider context of moral, social and cultural values of a society. As such, they are of interest also to those whose motivation to engage in the subject is not primarily medical. As the comparative history of medicine and science has shown, societies react to these phenomena in different ways, and it is interesting and illuminating to compare similarities and differences between these reactions, since they often reflect deeper differences in social and cultural values.