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Social Medicine and the New Society: Medicine and Scientific Humanism in mid‐Twentieth Century Britain
Author(s) -
PORTER DOROTHY
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of historical sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.186
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-6443
pISSN - 0952-1909
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6443.1996.tb00182.x
Subject(s) - humanism , politics , social science , social medicine , environmental ethics , sociology , engineering ethics , political science , law , medicine , public health , philosophy , nursing , engineering
The essay examines how the academic discipline of social medicine was founded in Britain in the 1940s as a political mission. The original conception of social medicine was built upon a collection of beliefs about the nature of science and medicine which were shared by various branches of the profession who identified with diverse social values. The synthesis of ideas that created the discipline, however, were integrated into a specifically left‐wing philosophy of social reform. This medicine of society for society emerged from the politics of science, ethics and society in the Second World War. As an expression of scientific humanism social medicine aimed to fulfil the ethical dictates of the modern evolutionary synthesis and be part of the rising tide of corporate welfarism. The paper concentrates on how its intellectual founder, John Ryle, believed this could be achieved by changing clinical medicine into a new discipline of holistic socio‐biology of health and disease.