A Plea for More History

In his Is There An Epistemic Role For History In Medicine? Thinking About Thyroid Cancer Nicholas Binney (Chap. 7 , this volume) aims to show how historical work can have its epistemic function, that is: a role in understanding and therefore justifying medical knowledge and practice. From my perspective as a medical historian, Binney’s programmatic text raises three questions: (1) Is this epistemic role for history important?; (2) Is Binney’s argument convincing?; (3) How can a plea for history appear so ahistorical, or more positively put: how can we make Binney’s promising approach even more historical? In what follows, I will try and answer these questions.