ABSTRACT
In the short overview of the history of the concept of chronic disease, this chapter highlights continuities and changes in ideas and practices relevant to chronic disease in medicine over a long period of time. In the nineteenth century, there were many, especially in the medical elite practicing in hospitals, who defended an ontological conception of disease; they wanted to identify species of diseases like species of flowers on the basis of the anatomo-clinical method. The foundation of the Journal of Chronic Diseases was contemporary to the development of "modern epidemiology", or "epidemiology of risk factors" as some English-speaking authors called it. The American psychiatrist George L. Engel developed a biopsychosocial model in 1977 and it was subsequently endorsed by the World Health Organization through the conceptual framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) in 2001.
