ABSTRACT
In 1984, Philip Strong contributed an article to Sociology of Health andIllness entitled ‘The academic encirclement of medicine’. This continued his attack on the way sociologists had uncritically adopted the thesis of medical imperialism (Strong 1979a). The body of medicine, he argued, had come to occupy such a large space in our society that it had become a major target for entrepreneurs in other academic fields. The merest taste of its blood could satisfy the hungriest of researchers. Cumulatively, however, the medical body was beset by leeches, watching its vitality drain into the more specialised ecological niches of its parasites. Clinical researchers were losing their edge over nonclinical competitors like chemists, physiologists or pharmacologists. Community physicians saw the erosion of their advantage over Ph.D. social scientists in epidemiology, planning and economics. As a generic education, medicine no longer trained people to work at research frontiers. The most that doctors could hope to do was to learn enough to mediate between science and practice. But, Strong pointed out, this was the heart of medical jurisdiction. It was in practice, in the historic, charismatic role of the healer, that medical power found its resting place. Medicine was an occupation united by its access to this craft mystery, by experiences which no lay person could share and few would even be privileged to witness. Moreover, the role of the mediator brought its own power: medicine appropriated parts of the basic sciences around it in a process of inoculation. When looked at in this light, Strong implies, it may be difficult to tell which is the host and which the parasite. Perhaps the relationship is more symbiotic, based on mutual dependence, than a simple analysis would suggest.
