The sociological image of medicine and the patient

Abstract

Jack Elinson raises somewhat rhetorical questions about the value of medical care and medical sociology. Behind them is a serious concern with the type and scope of medicalisation in modern society as well as its sociological criticism. This raises the issue of whether the various theoretical images of medicine and the patient which sociology provides are able to account for the effect of the social environment upon morbidity and mortality as shown, for instance, by the Alameda County Study. Three theoretically distinct approaches are discussed in detail, structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism and conflict theory. These characterise medical sociology over the last 30 years. They elucidate more clearly Elinson's own image of medicine and the patient. But none seems to match his standpoint vis-a-vis the medicalisation of care which refrains from citing psychological forces but emphasises the availability of good medical services.