ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines medicine in general, but most particularly the medical profession and the institutions providing medical care from the point of view of the sociology of medicine. It shows how, by adopting that point of view, one can better evaluate the nature of medical institutions in a way that is useful to the formulation of practical social policy. Collaborating with medicine in its institutionalized tasks requires adopting that distorted view with all its deficiencies. The book focuses on the areas that the medical practitioner himself has considered problematic, adopting the conception of what is problematic from the profession itself without raising questions about the perspective from which the problem is defined. The specialty of medical sociology has shown little of the ferment and independence evident in the work of sociologists working in other areas, whether criminology, education, poverty, or other social problems.
