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The State, The Medical Profesion and Public Health This book examines the interplay between the disciplines of history, medicine and sociology. In the first section it develops the theoretical basis for exploring medical knowledge as the product of cultural, political and economic factors, rather than conceptualizing it as a natural science which exists in terms of its knowledge claims independently from social forces. In the second section its empirical focus is nineteenth century South Australia, with a comparison developed with Canada, and drawing on British and American examples when appropriate. Thus it is a historical sociology: the attempt to place the development of medicine in the wider context of its social and political context, rather than rendering it as the history of great men, great ideas and great institutions (as is common in many histories).

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Kevin White, PhD, BA is Reader in Sociology at the Australian National University. He has lectured at Flinders University of South Australia, Wollongong University and the Victoria University of Wellington.

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