Medical Sociology: A Brief Review

A brief history of the development of medical sociology is presented here. In the first three decades of the twentieth century medical sociology was identified first with the field of social work and later with the field of public health. Not until the 1930s and the 1940s did the interrelations between society and the health sciences become of interest to sociologists. After the close of World War II, the expansion of the National Institutes of Health and the interest of private foundations in interdisciplinary research stimulated and supported the growth of medical sociology as an area of research and teaching. During the 1950s, the field developed in two directions: sociology of medicine, centered in departments of sociology in universities, and sociology in medicine, concentrated in schools of medicine and health care facilities. As training programs proliferated through the 1960s, the market for books on the subject grew quickly. Five textbooks on medical sociology are reviewed, and some suggestions are made about issues in need of study for the future development of the field.

Author(s): August B. Hollingshead

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Volume 51, Issue 4 (pages 531–542)
Published in 1973