SOCIAL MEDICINE, THEORIES AND PRACTICE, THE SOUTH AFRICAN DIASPORA, AND THE DIFFUSION OF IDEAS

In this issue, it is our pleasure to offer the first of two parts by Mervyn Susser in which he explores the fascinating story of social medicine in South Africa in the early years after the second world war, and implicitly touches on the important issue of the international transfer of ideas. In this first part, Susser, who is one of the giants of global public health in the second half of the 20th century, gives a fascinating personal account of his early adult life and how the experiences of the second world war culminated in his finding not only his lifelong partner and collaborator, Zena Stein, but also his route into medicine. His discovery of the Peckham experiment and Sidney Kark and the beginnings of community orientated primary care (COPC). In related pieces, …