MEDICAL SOCIAL ASPECTS IN PRACTICE

A considerable fraction of the successful care and treatment of patients and, undoubtedly, the prevention of much illness is to be identified with the proper consideration of sociologic factors. The case of every patient who consults a physician has a medical social aspect. This social component of medicine may vary widely in importance, but frequently it plays a major rôle in diagnosis, prognosis and treatment and in the prevention of disease and unhappiness. Every one is constantly confronted with social problems which he settles without great difficulty or to which he soon adjusts himself; but the problems may become of medical significance, so that, as Parry of Bath indicated late in the eighteenth century, it is often more important to know what kind of a patient has a disease than what disease the patient has. Lack of thoroughness and imperfect skill are causes of many errors in the prevention, diagnosis