Thoughts on the relevance of medical history

Clinicians are, by their very nature, historians--a question remains as to whether and how the history of medicine should be studied as a subject. In recent years medical educators have increasingly answered this question by deleting medical history from the curriculum. But this may be a mistake: among other things of value, medical history provides a much-needed perspective of medical knowledge, and a pigeon holer into which essential new facts--basic, clinical, whatever--can be filed without getting lost. But linear learning, the piling-on of facts, is more likely to bring exhaustion than comprehension.