Henry E. Sigerist on the History of Medicine
by Associate Professor of Health Policy Elizabeth Fee, Elizabeth Fee, Theodore M. Brown, Theodore Brown
Category: Medical

In the first half of this century, Henry Ernest Sigerist was widely regarded as the world's leading historian of medicine. A brilliant teacher and lecturer, Sigerist made medical history exciting and relevant for a whole generation of young physicians, medical students, historians, and the general public. A Marxist sympathizer and advocate of socialized medicine, he also had an enormous and controversial influence on the medical politics of his time. In Making Medical History historians Elizabeth Fee and Theodore M. Brown bring together individuals from various disciplines, many of whom knew Henry Sigerist, all of whom help to illuminate why, thirty-five years after his death, he continues to be revered by many public health professionals and medical historians. Sigerist came to the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine in 1932, arriving from Leipzig to succeed William Henry Welch as director. During Sigerist's tenure at Hopkins, his many accomplishments included founding the leading scholarly journal in the field, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine; transforming the American Association for the History of Medicine into a professional organization; and recruiting and mentoring such luminaries as Owsei Temkin, Ludwig Edelstein, and Erwin Ackerknecht. Organized into three main sections--biographical, historiographical, and political--Making Medical History includes discussions of Sigerist's influence on the history of medicine, medical sociology, and health policy. Today, as the American health care system undergoes tremendous structural changes, Sigerist's work and vision are newly relevant, and his dramatically effective presentation of medical history willcome as a revelation to a new generation of readers. Contributors: Nora Sigerist Beeson, Marcel H. Bickel, Theodore M. Brown, Leslie A. Falk, Elizabeth Fee, John F. Hutchinson, Ingrid Kstner, Walter J. Lear, Michael R. McVaugh, Genevieve Miller, Milton I. Roemer, Owsei Temkin, Ilza Veith, and Heinrich von Staden.