[Einar Sjövall - a forensic pathologist in Lund with a social pathos]

The Swedish forensic pathologist Einar Sjovall (1879-1964) lived and worked mainly in Lund, southern Sweden, in the early decades of this century. He became famous, not only for particular broad medical knowledge and skills, but also for his devotion to social questions. It was obvious to Sjovall, in the same way as to the German pathologist Rudolf Virchow, that medicine is a prism for many aspects of society and the way people live and work. In other words, Sjovall was convinced that public health measures and prevention of alcohol abuse were very important to improve the health of the Swedish people. Therefore he wrote several papers and books, not only on strictly academic matters, but also on the need of public health reforms and structural changes within the health care sector, eg. building primary health care. This seemed radical at his time, but the development in later years has proved Sjovall to be right in many ways. He was also a respected teacher at the Medical Faculty, University of Lund, and wrote textbooks on forensic medicine. During the Second World War Sjovall had to face and cope with several political problems in the academic world, being one of the leading academics of the university. He always tried to defend positions of humanism and opposition to nazi rule in occupied Denmark and Norway. A current political debate in Sweden has focused on abortion laws from the 1930's and 1940's. Sjovall was involved in this process, as member of a national committee, and advocated abortion for women with certain conditions, but always in a restricted way and after full consent had been obtained. In this delicate matter he was obviously guided by his background in social medicine. This highlights the crucial questions raised by medical decision-making in the border-areas between societal needs and professional thinking in academic medicine.