The History of Medicine

The history of medicine has been a robust field of academic inquiry and popular discussion since the 1970s. The interest in it goes back much further, but it was then that it began to link up with social protest and the counter-culture movement, and with feminist politics in particular. Medicine was seen as a part of ‘the Establishment’, perceived to be anti-democratic and paternalistic. The blossoming of the social history of medicine was launched on this agenda, focusing on the historical...