Social Work; Essays on the Meeting Ground of Doctor and Social Worker

A collection of essays examining how clinical medicine and social work intersect, outlining the historical rise of medical home visiting and practical methods for medical-social diagnosis and treatment. Chapters describe the role, duties, and training of social assistants and home visitors, and detail techniques such as history-taking, economic and mental investigation, evaluation of fatigue and industrial disease, and attention to natural restorative processes. Later sections offer examples of social therapeutics and consider the motives and ethical aims of collaboration between physicians and social workers. The emphasis is on individualized assessment that links clinical findings with patients’ social circumstances to guide preventive, rehabilitative, and community-based responses.