HIST 249 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Cowpox, Henrietta Lacks, Cervical Cancer
Document Summary
Changing medical concepts from equilibrium balance models of disease to individual disease entities that are treated as concrete realities. Medical systems: conglomerations of institutions that have been added to each other. Governments are trying to create rational relationships between these institutions (creating real rational systems) The nature of medical professions has changed dramatically from a pluralism with a wide variety of practitioners. There is a division of labour around it. Collective responsibility over healthcare that existed earlier to some degree particularly in public health. Now with the state funding so much of healthcare the amount of collective responsibility (state responsibility over health care and prevention) has become overwhelming. Relationship to state or local authorities: doctors feel some people have more power over the healthcare system than they do. The role of government has become very clear and overwhelming. Not everyone gets to be a healer: people have to recognise the healer as someone with a particular competence.
