Instrumentation in Nuclear Medicine. Volume 2

George Rosen's "From Medical Police to Social Medicine" is a collection of essays he wrote during the past thirty years, ranging, as the title states, from medical police to social medicine. The underlying thesis of many of the essays is that the theories, the policies, and the practices of public health can be understood fully only against the backdrop of the social, economic, and political characteristics of the time and the place in which they occurred. In his usual scholarly fashion, Rosen shows that political thinking of the 17th and 18th centuries conceived of the welfare of society as identical with the welfare of the state. Thus, mercantilism in England and France and its German variant, the more politically oriented cameralism, considered the enhancement of state power to be the prime objective of social organization, the strengthening of the state to be the goal of social and economic life. The dictum that more people meant more power was almost universally accepted. Theoretical and practical emphasis, therefore, was on population growth-in sharp contrast to our current emphasis on slowing down and stopping the increase of population. More people meant more state power, both in peace and in war. But only if the people were healthy! It was therefore in the interest of the state to prevent disease and heal the sick. The expression of this concern with health in public policy and the arrangements for its implementation varied from one state to another with the variations in political philosophy and governmental structure. Thus, England for a long time sought to implement health measures through local government, private initiative, and cooperative action, whereas the German states tended toward centralized health policy and enforcement. People familiar with Rosen's historical studies require no words of mine to whet their reading appetite; others interested in the history of public health should join them.