ABSTRACT
Risks related to toxic and hazardous discharges and waste appear to be a fruitful basis for a fusion of the histories of the environment, health and medicine. The environment broadly conceived – natural, built and social – has always been present in the history of diseases. More specifically, the role of the natural environment has been prominent in some strands of medical history. The interaction between humans and micro-organisms provides another meeting point for historians of health and the environment. Medico-environmental history is problem-based rather than discipline-based, and thus open to interdisciplinary collaboration. One further way in which the history of health and medicine and environmental history can balance and complement each other has more to do with their general disciplinary profiles or “styles” than with individual themes of interest. Inquiries into the relationship between health and place have various points of contact with environmental history.
