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Lester S. King, MD

JAMA. 1968;204(1):47-50.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Most physicians, as well as laymen, enjoy seeing the physical reconstructions of our medical past. Medical antiquarians have achieved remarkable success in finding and collecting the physical aspects of bygone medicine. Various museums the country over have excellent displays, eg, complete reconstructions of physicians' offices or pharmacies, or, on a less ambitious scale, various instruments and other artifacts that indicate our medical heritage.

A different way of reconstructing the past involves not the physical or material remnants but rather the concepts, ideas, and intellectual adventures of times past. Through these we reconstruct the world of medical thought rather than the world of medical things. And this, in turn, we may do in one of two ways. We may read what historians say about the old physicians and their concepts, ie, what is ordinarily called "secondary" source material, or we may read the original writings themselves, the "primary" sources of the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Scientific Publications Division, American Medical Association, Chicago.

Footnotes
Reprint requests to 535 N Dearborn St, Chicago 60610 (Dr. King).

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