ABSTRACT
This book sets out to look at the arrangements that are and have been made at different times and places for restoring and maintaining health and for ameliorating suffering, paying particular attention to biomedicine in advanced industrial societies and most specifically in Britain. The intention is to treat these phenomena, including the associated medical knowledge, as socially created. The book is written not only for those who are teaching or taking specialist courses in the sociology of medicine or the sociology of health and illness but for sociologists and social scientists more generally. The ways in which a society copes with the major events of birth, illness and death are central to the beliefs and practices of that society and also bear a close relationship to its other major social, economic and cultural institutions. In particular, the treatment of those who are temporarily or permanently dependent on others is a revealing indicator of the social values lying behind the allocation of material and non-material resources. This being so, understanding the beliefs and practices associated with health and healing and the social processes involved contributes to a deeper understanding of the society in which they are found.
