Citation

Meredith F. Am. J. Sociol. 1922; 28(3): 319-325.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1922, University of Chicago Press)

DOI

10.1086/213458

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

There is at present a great increase in efforts for health. Better educated public. Efforts of leaders. The medical profession in not the only one responsible for securing better health. Social and economic forces, correlation of those working toward same ideal from different view points. The function of the physician is in the medical field, telling individuals and groups what is necessary for health. The attaining of these conditions is often not a medical matter. Relations to such a condition as poverty to health. The attaining of the conditions of health depends on individuals, groups, society as a whole, and on social agencies. Physicians should not be expected to leave the medical field to bring about health. The duty of the medical profession should be to stimulate individual patients, and those who can help them, by stating the needs of health. Physicians are often censured for giving inapplicable advice. The should be censured rather if they fail to give the best advice possible, regardless of how inapplicable it may seem. In so doing they may rely on three possibilities: (a) increased efforts of individual, (b) uniting of individuals for public health measures, (c) the co-operation of social agencies. Much medical advice is futile because the adjustment of social conditions is often the first essential in applying health advice. The social worker offers the solution in many cases. In order to act most effectively she must have much medical knowledge. Properly trained she would represent the connecting link between individual patients and doctors, even conceivably assuming the total responsibility for the patient's welfare. Of equal importance would be her function as the connecting ling between medical science and other forces working for human betterment. Lack of correlation of our knowledge in diverse fields is responsible for our lack of health. Medicine has received much of the blame. But the problem of producing health is to be solved only by concerted work in many fields.