The Uses of The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Case of Law

study written by a sociologist. Much of the influence of the book, how-ever, has been on disciplines other than history and sociology. Joel How-ell demonstrates in his contribution to this issue that the book has been widely read by physicians. This is unsurprising because the book is about physicians. The book has been widely cited in other fields as well, fields as diverse as health services research, nursing, social work, bioethics, phi-losophy of medicine, dentistry, and anthropology. It is possible, however, that in no other single discipline has the book been referenced as often as in law. Although Paul Starr himself was a fellow in law, medicine, and science at the Yale Law School in the mid-1970s, law plays a minor role in The Social Transformation. Indeed, one could argue that Starr seriously under-estimated the role of law in shaping the major trends that the book docu-ments, for example the part played by the corporate practice of medicine doctrine in supporting the dominance of doctors in the early twentieth century or the importance of antitrust law in undermining that dominance in the late twentieth century.1 Legal scholarship has not neglected Starr’s work, however. As of the summer of 2003, The Social Transformation of American Medicine had been cited more than fourteen hundred times in 433 law review article