ABSTRACT
Men and women are social animals. 1 Social medicine postulates that better social conditions make for the better health of individuals, while the health of people living in what is colloquially called a “sick” society suffers. 2 Emile Durkheim went so far as to argue that negative changes in social conditions are a major cause of suicide. However, people die as individuals, and clinical medicine looks for causes of mortality in the physical circumstances of individuals. Although the biomedical and the social approaches to health may stress contrasting influences, they are not necessarily contradictory. People who have major physical disabilities can have trouble fitting into society, and poor people may have a diet that is bad for their physical health.
