[Health, medicine and population development in Norway]

If health, medicine and medical services in Norway throughout the millennium are seen through a demographer's eyes, it is obvious that the health situation and the preconditions for medical work have changed profoundly, especially in the last two centuries. A relatively stable, young, and geographically dispersed population, living with, and probably to a large extent accepting high morbidity and high mortality, has gradually been transformed into a more middleaged, urbanized population where absence of disease and untimely death is perceived as a normal situation, which it is the goal of the health services to achieve. The population growth was especially accelerated during the 19th century, when mortality rates declined rapidly before a corresponding decrease took place in the birth rates. The demographic effects of medicine in Norway in the 19th century should mostly be ascribed to efforts in preventive and social medicine. The life saving and life prolonging effects of curative medicine belong to the the 20th century, a period when specific treatment of infections had become available. However, further achievements in demographic effects of medicine have to take into account the demands set by the perceptions of health and welfare in the population, and the ever increasing social and economic constraints.