ABSTRACT
The reasons are not hard to find. First, historians have been intimidated because of the medical training which the field seemed to require. Second, they discounted the historical relevance of health because of the crudeness of existing scholarship. This consisted of narrow biographies of famous medical pioneers and celebratory interpretations of medical history in terms of progress from ignorance to enlightened modernity. One of the triumphs of social history, however, has been its ability to revolutionize the frameworks of historical significance by demonstrating how seemingly unpromising subjects can open revealing windows upon past social life. This is now being achieved in the social history of health in two main areas.
