Welcome to the website of the Department of the History and Philosphy of Medical Sciences of the University of Medical Sciences in Poznan.

„The history of medicine in the twentieth century is about the history of power: not just the power of knowledge in the abstract, but power in the hands of doctors and (increasingly) patients; in the hands of institutions such as churches, charities, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and, not least, in the hands of industrialists, economists and governments in peacetime and war. So, too, the writing of medical history, inevitably, was bound up with the complex, ever-changing politics of medicine. The profession of medical history expanded rapidly from the 1960s, and much of the new intellectual impetus came from the anti-authoritarian 'cultural revolution' of the 1960s and 1970s. Histories of medical progress - of the growth of science, professions and welfare - were challenged by histories of surveillance, of social control, and the de-skilling of patients.”