Changing Disciplines.Lectures on the History,Method and Motives of Social Pathology
- Author:
John A. Ryle, M.D. Geoffrey Cumberlege,
Oxford University Press. 12s. 6d.
This small book of 122 pages, marks the beginning of a new era in social medicine. It is the result of lectures given in America by the author.
Professor Ryle stresses the need for study of social pathology, statistics, research, the measurement of health, and has a fascinating chapter on Medical Ethics and the New Humanism.
It is disappointing to find that the author refers in the Preface to the need for psychological and sociological studies, and of ” balancing the emotional with the rational components of a developing social conscience “, but makes little reference at all to mental health in the book except by the implication that psychological medicine and its allied disciplines have reached a certain agreement on some fundamentals and show their differences on other aspects.
The section on Human Needs discusses mortality rates of the under privileged industrial worker, the expectation of life in the age period 3 to 12 months, the need for inclusion of social medicine in the medical curriculum, but says nothing about emotional needs. It is a pity that the author lays so much stress upon the body and so little on the mind. Nevertheless the book opens a new vista and takes us a step nearer to the conception of positive health. A.T.
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