The survival of traditional medicine in lay medical views: An empirical approach to the history of medicine

Abstract

Little is known about the way in which contemporary lay medical beliefs may preserve orthodox medical wisdom of the past. To examine this question it is necessary to establish the continuing presence of former orthodox views in current socially-shared popular medical beliefs. This paper describes a method evolved for this purpose. A group of people fill in a questionnaire in which they are asked to endorse one member of each of several pairs of statements representing opposing views on a topic. The degree of consensus in their endorsements provides a crude index of the relative strength of the endorsed beliefs amongst contemporary people. A study is reported in which the propositions in question were derived from the neoclassical canon of medical doctrine on the nature of depression and its prevention. © 1981, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.