Chapter 2

Intellectual activities offer two dimensions for historical study, the development of knowledge and institutional formation. The former is the most common in the literature of medical sociology but the focus here will be on the social, following the steps of its institutionalization.

Only since about 1950 has medical sociology begun to achieve full measure of professional status, but, as early as the mid-nineteenth century, one can trace both an approach to study and actual research activities that are remarkably close to their modern counterparts. The motive force of such work, however, was not sustained. It was not until the 1920s that an unbroken development of knowledge began in the sociology of medicine, and only after World War II were individuals identified as "medical sociologists." It this social history of medical sociology, from 1920 to 1980, that is described in this article.