Medicine is a social science: COVID-19 and the tragedy of residential care facilities in high-income countries
Tanja Krones, Gabriele Meyer, Settimio Monteverde
Abstract
### Summary box When Rudolf Virchow was sent to the region of Upper Silesia in 1848 to investigate the outbreak of typhus, he went as a young scientist, who was later considered as one of the founders of pathology and infectiology.1 He came back as one of the founders of social hygiene and epidemiology and, after his friend Neumann, coined the sentence ‘medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine at a larger scale’2 (figure 1). Figure 1 Title page of the …
Topics & Concepts
Tragedy (event)Social medicineTyphusNothingCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)Scale (ratio)MedicineSocial scienceGerontologySociologyLawPublic healthPolitical sciencePathologyGeographyPhilosophyCartographyEpistemologyDiseaseInfectious disease (medical specialty)Healthcare Systems and ChallengesPalliative Care and End-of-Life IssuesGlobal Health Care Issues