The Environment in Modern Medicine

Health and Environmental Change

In this course, Dr Olwenn Martin (University College London) explores the relationship between environmental change and human health. In the first module, we outline the role of environmental factors in medical understanding through history, noting their sidelining with the rise of modern anatomical explanations for health and disease, and its recent re-emergence. The second module then looks at the relationship between economic development and better health, and how this association is being undermined by human-caused environmental change. In the third module, we consider the ways in which the environment, particularly in the context of climate change, can be related to disease. We conclude with a fourth module examining some approaches to addressing environmental change and its impacts on human health.

The Environment in Modern Medicine

In this lecture, we think about how the place of the environment in the study of medicine has changed through history. We focus on: (i) the shift away from environmental factors as central to understanding disease from ancient to modern medicine; (ii) the greater focus on anatomy over environment in modern medicine, and how this was facilitated by developments from the 17th century like the invention of the microscope; (iii) the sidelining of environmental health from this period, in which it became a specialist sub-discipline within medicine, rather than central to it; (iv) the revival of interest in the relationship between health and environment since the Second World War, particularly in the context of concerns around planetary boundaries.