The study of medical history

Abstract

If you look at a large painting only a few feet away from it, you will only see a small - perhaps insignificant - detail of it; if you view it at a distance of some yards, your eyes will absorb a larger, more meaningful area; and the more you recede from it the more you can perceive of the extent of the picture until your field of vision will encompass the whole scene. In the end, therefore, you will have reached a point where the small detail which you saw at a short distance will merge in a wider context and acquire adequate significance since an item can only be appreciated when viewed in relation to the whole pattern in which it occurs. The study of the history of medicine may be likened to this perceptive process. Looking at a 1 arge canvas only a few feet away corresponds to the 'present' which is only a minute part of the long con tin uum of time. Receding from the painting with consequent enlargement of your vista of the picture corresponds to your study of our medical past by which the present acquires meaning as a phase in a long process of development that has been unfolding over the centuries. Thus the study of medical history broadens, for the physician, his concept of his art and science and gives him a heightened awareness of himself and his work in relation to the events of the past and of his own time. If, therefore, the practice of medicine is to have any meaning to the student and to the practitioner, apart from its technical aspects and its material rewards, it is imperative that its history be taught to the undergraduate and be cultivated by him after he leaves the university.