"The issues constituting the history of medicine are consequential: how societies organize health care, how individuals on states relate to sickness, how we understand our own identity and agency as sufferers or healers. In Locating Medical History: The Stories and Their Meanings, Frank Huisman, John Harley Warner, and other historians explore and reflect on a field that accommodates a remarkable diversity of practitioners and approaches.".

"At a time when medical history is facing profound choice, about its future, these scholars explore the discipline in the distant and recent past in order to rethink its missions and methods today. They discuss such issues as the periodic estrangement of medical history from medicine, the influence of Foucault on the writing of medical history, and the shifts from social to cultural history and back again. They explore an early history of the field, its transformations since the 1970s, and its prospects for the future.".

"With diverse constitutions, a multiplicity of approaches, styles, and aims is both expected and desired. This volume locates medical history within itself and within larger historiographic trends, providing a springboard for discussions about what the history of medicine should be, and what aims it should serve."--BOOK JACKET.