Medicine and Human Welfare

These three lectures were given by Dr. Henry E. Sigerist, who is William H. Welch professor of the history of medicine in Johns Hopkins University, as the Terry Lectures at Yale University. Dr. Sigerist is referred to by Louis Fischer in a recent volume as "a stiff-necked advocate of the Soviets." These three lectures reveal that Dr. Sigerist is an excellent historian in the field of medicine but that his information and his views regarding the practice of medicine are greatly modified by the point of view reflected in Fischer's characterization. Briefly, it is Dr. Sigerist's view that the technology of medicine has outrun its sociology and that the only way to cure the situation is to remove the doctor from the sphere of competitive business, free him from economic worries or, in other words, put him on a salary. His final chapters are an unqualified advocacy of the system