[Social medicine: why--how--what for? (Social medicine and anthropology)].

The speech held on the occasion of the Salomon Neumann Medal Award 1992 describes with biographical pointers how an internistic clinician (for outpatients) developed towards taking up social medicine as his specialty. The starting point was the management and care of patients suffering from chronic diseases. This was an important step in the direction towards "successful conditional healthiness". The conditions included in the concept are both of a personal and of a sociological nature, i.e. shared by many. They are dealt with by social medicine and also by medical sociology, the separation of which constituted an painful disappointment. Arguments against a dichotomy of social medicine and medical sociology are also supplied by looking back on the history of ideas with emphasis on ancient dietetics and ecology, the early Age of Enlightenment (Leibniz) and the 19th century (Virchow, Neumann). It is suggested to create an active link between social medicine as the overriding concept and epidemiology, social hygiene and medical sociology as subsumptions.