History, Medical Humanities and Medical Education

History of medicine has long been present in medical education, and over the previous century much discussion has turned on its relevance as the medical curriculum itself has evolved. The development of history of medicine graduate programmes and the ‘social turn’ of the 1970s stimulated further debate about the distance between history and medicine. At the same time, separate medical humanities programmes were finding advocates among physicians and medical educators. This article traces these curricular divergences and interactions, and highlights certain historical biases about the aims and audiences for historical instruction that impact the ways history might become more involved with medical humanities programmes.