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AbstractTwentieth Century medical education has stressed the basic sciences to the neglect of the humanities. The intent of this commentary is to explore the humanities' role and contribution to the professional formation of the physician. A major change on the United States' medical school admission exam starting in 2015 is a move away from its current focus on natural sciences and begins to incorporate a wider breath of liberal studies and social sciences. The ideal 21st Century physician is a more well rounded person who can interact on a deeper level with patients and not by a narrow spectrum of intellectual interests. The 21st Century curriculum has a unique opportunity to reflect and build upon professional values and attributes informed by the humanities, particularly as the latter relate to the role of the physician in society. It is important to be creative in constructing opportunities for humanities learning experiences and resources within the scope and structure of the curriculum. It is necessary to think in more innovative ways as to the experiential learning environment that targets professional formation, and for a more broadly and humanly educated physician.

The following circular letter was sent by the ICRC and League chief medical officers to all the National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies with a view to rationalizing consignments of medicaments and medical material for emercency medical actions. The circular letter contains practical advice and precise rules to be observed when selecting and packaging emergency relief medicaments.The success of emergency action in cases of natural disaster or armed conflict depends of the degree of preparedness of personnel and material: it is not necessarily proportional to the number of volunteers or the volume of relief supplies hastily dispatched.

The concept of paternalism, normally applied to interference with liberty of action for the good of the person interfered with, should be extended to withholding information or lying with the same intent. Surveys & statements of individual physicians indicate that this form of paternalism is widespread in medical practice. Arguments for this practice appeal either to the primary duty to prevent harm, to an implied contract with the patient for the prevention of such harm, or to the patient's incapacity to understand the situation. These arguments confuse technological & moral competence, assuming that the superior knowledge of physicians, in medical matters amounts to superior ability to solve moral problems arising in medical practice. W. H. Stoddard.

Although medical sociology has been taught at medical schools for a few decades, medical students still have difficulty in understanding the usefulness of sociology in medical practice. This article discusses how medical sociology can be taught in a way that is more practical and thus more useful to medical students and medical practitioners. By using the concept of "individualized medical sociology," I show how medical sociologists can construct elaborated individual cases and apply relevant sociological principles to help students and medical practitioners understand the relevance of sociology and also show them how to use sociology in medical practice. Medical sociologists can effectively make use of sociological material by reviewing the basic literature of the discipline and by constructing cases along the lines of problem-based learning (PBL) so as to accord with the literature. This article challenges a main sociological argument that sociology should study social groups and societies rather than individuals and shows how to teach individualized medical sociology through PBL. By understanding the relevance and usefulness of sociology in medical practice, medical students can improve their communication skills, understand more about their patients as social beings, become culturally competent, and become better doctors.

Discourse plays an important role in medicine, and medical discourse in the broadest sense (discourse in and about healing, curing, or therapy; expressions of suffering; and relevant language ideologies) has profound anthropological significance. As modes of social action, writing and speaking help constitute medical institutions, curative practices, and relations of authority in and beyond particular healing encounters. This review describes cultural variation in medical discourse and variation across genres and registers. It then surveys two approaches to analyzing medical discourse: conversation analysis (CA) and discourse studies echoing Foucault's work, attempting to spur dialogue between them. Such dialogue could be fruitful because, despite hesitancy to invoke macrosocial variables, conversation analysts as well as Foucaultian discourse analysts have reflected on medical authority. Finally, the article reviews recent attempts to contextualize closely analyzed interactions—written exchanges as well as face-to-face clinical encounters—vis-à-vis the global circulation of linguistic forms and ideologies.

Medical anthropology is concerned with both the causes and consequences of human sickness, and its various theoretical orientations can be grouped into four major approaches: medical ecology, critical medical anthropology, interpretative medical anthropology, and ethnomedicine. While medical anthropologists of all theoretical persuasions have examined why people get sick, the analysis and understanding of patterns of treatment has been largely confined to ethnomedicine. Historically, more emphasis has been placed on the personalistic or supernatural aspects of ethnomedical systems than on naturalistic or empirical components. While this focus has produced valuable insights into the role of ritual and belief in healing, it has led to the impression that traditional medicine is primarily symbolic. Moreover, it ignores the theoretical bases of traditional healing strategies and the practical means by which most of the world heals itself, namely plants. Recently there has been more interest in the empirical character of ethnomedical systems, and in this paper we consider the role that medical ethnobiology has played in this shift of focus. We begin with a brief history of medical anthropology to illuminate why naturalistic medicine was neglected for so long. We then review exemplary research in two areas of medical ethnobiology – ethnophysiology and medical ethnobotany – that address the study of naturalistic aspects of medical systems. We conclude with suggestions for future research at the interface between medical ethnobiology and medical anthropology that will contribute to both fields.