ABSTRACT
Bernhard J. Stern set an early model for the use of the historical method in the study of American medicine. His work was strong in its analysis of institutions related to the organization of medical care, especially the economic and political. In sum, working mainly in the traditions of individual scholarship and with much less financial support for their work than those who use quantitative methodologies, the social historians of medicine, in our judgment, have made unusually significant contributions to the sociology of medicine which, at the same time, are strikingly articulate in their relevance for public policy. Talcott Parsons, beginning in the 1930s, is the sociologist who is usually credited with the beginnings of the sociology of medicine as a profession. The distinction between "modern" work and the general history of the field is important to make clear. In the sociology of the professions, the sociology of law is much the older, especially in European sociology.
