Remembering Medicine's Past

Barron H. Lerner

doi:10.7326/0003-4819-129-6-199809150-00034

“Being poor is watching all the residents passing a laryngoscope down your dead baby's throat … Being poor is having four young men put their fingers in your vagina, and only one of them has his name end in MD.” Writing in 1969, a Philadelphia medical student used these words to describe how urban teaching hospitals treated poor patients as nothing more than “educational material.”

This critique of medical education was recalled by Yale University historian Naomi Rogers at the 71 st annual meeting of the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM), held in Toronto from 7 to 10 May 1998. Rogers' talk, “Medical Students ‘Mad As Hell’: The Radical Health Movement in the Late 1960s,” was one of 92 papers presented that explored provocative aspects of the history of medicine. Rogers' presentation addressed the now-forgotten role played by radical medical students in the 1960s and 1970s in challenging what they saw as paternalistic, sexist, and racist behavior among physicians.

Although not all of the papers presented in Toronto made explicit connections to modern medical issues, history has much to offer today's practicing clinicians and clinicians-in-training. First, it demonstrates the dynamic nature of scientific knowledge. For example, today's therapeutic interventions may prove to be as misguided as earlier treatments, such as routine tonsillectomy or gastric freezing. In addition, history reveals how the practice of medicine is a social enterprise: Cultural, political, legal, and professional factors influence how physicians and patients understand and respond to scientific information.

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