[Historical studies and medicine. A study in Swedish doctoral thesis concerning history of medicine 1970-2004].

This article is a study in ninety doctoral thesis published in Sweden between 1970 and 2004 concerning history of the science of medicine and hospital care, patients and practicioners, causes of death and public health, doctors and nurses, health movements and lay medicine and other aspects of the history of medicine. A quantitative part of the study shows that most thesis have been written at departments of history or history of ideas, but sociological and mulitdisciplinary studies are also rather common. Only six of the thesis have been written at departments within the medical faculties. The second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries has been investigated more often than other historical periods. More than ninety percent of the thesis has been published in Swedish and concerns history of medicine in Sweden. A wide range of methods and theories has been used and history of medicine does not as a field deviate from historical research in general in this respect. A chronological bibliography of the ninety thesis ends the article.