Medicine, evolution, and natural selection: an historical overview.
Contemporary Darwinian medicine is a still-expanding new discipline, one of whose principal aims is to arrive at an evolutionary understanding of those aspects of the body that leave it vulnerable to disease. Historically, there was a precedent for this research; between 1880 and 1940, several scientists tried to develop some general evolutionary theories of disease as arising from deleterious traits that escape elimination by natural selection. In contrast, contemporary Darwinian medicine uses evolutionary theory to consider all the possible reasons why selection has left humans vulnerable to disease.
Zampieri
Fabio
F
Institut d'Histoire de la Médecine et de la Santé, Genève, Switzerland. FABIOZAMPIERI@HOTMAIL.COM
D005075:Biological Evolution; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006666:History of Medicine; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D012641:Selection, Genetic