本书面向的是这样一些读者：他们初次与医学史相遇，希望能有一本入门性质的介绍。 医学史就是医学史家动笔写下的事。在接下来的部分里，我要试着去解释医学史家们以前做过什么、现在又在做什么。描述他们这些工作的时候，隐含地带出的问题便是哪些事情他们还没有做，或者没有做完，或者做得不够完美，因为他们的确把许许多多机会留给了未来。

我要试着说明为什么研究医学史很重要。我还想要解释为什么这样多的人醉心于医学史，为什么这一领域发展得如此迅速。人们发现，对健康和卫生保健的昔日有所了解竟是这样的乐事，其乐趣体现在各种不同的层次上。不过我要有言在先，我们这本书里主要涉及的还不是医学史家们得到的答案，而是他们提出的问题。

John C. Burnham;

B.A., Stanford University, 1951; M.A., University of Wisconsin, 1952; Ph.D., Stanford University, 1958.

Professor Burnham specializes in the history of medicine and American social history; his particular interest is the history of psychiatry. His recent books include How Superstition Won and Science Lost: Popularizing Science and Health in the United States (1987), Paths into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine, and Morals (1988), Bad Habits: Drinking, Smoking, Taking Drugs, Gambling, Sexual Misbehavior, and Swearing in American History (1993) and How the Idea of Profession Changed the Writing of Medical History (1998), and What Is Medical History? (2005). Dr. Burnham is presently studying the impact of Freud on the Western world, and also the deinstitutionalization of mental patients in the 1950s.

Professor Burnham has taught at Stanford and the Claremont Colleges, and he has been a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Australia at the Universities of Melbourne, Tasmania, and New England. He has also served as the Tallman Visiting Professor at Bowdoin College. In 2002-2003, he was a visiting fellow at Robinson College in the University of Cambridge. He has served as President of the American Association for the History of Medicine and has held many other offices in scholarly organizations both in the United States and abroad, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.