This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Lester S. King, MD

JAMA. 1985;254(19):2802-2804.

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

There are two sorts of history: narrative, which tells what happened, and explanatory, which tells how it happened and why. Schoolchildren usually learn narrative history, which can be quite absorbing. The story of wars and battles, deeds of heroism and adventure, biographical accounts of important people—such details fill up most of the history texts used in grade school.

If we jump from grade school to medical school, we find that traditional medical history, for the most part, follows the narrative type, but shows very little dramatic excitement. Too much of it takes the form that so-and-so was born here or there, had one or another kind of education, discovered such-and-such, wrote and published much (or little), exerted this or that influence, and died. And most students find it extraordinarily dull. When offered masses of such straightforward information, they may reply, "So what?," and this question is very difficult to answer. . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?