EC Clinical and Medical Case Reports

Keywords: Family Medicine; History of Medicine

Family medicine has a very long tradition.

In the USA, for example, until the middle of the XX century, almost all doctors were engaged in general practice. This meant that they treated all diseases without restrictions stemming from a particular type of pathology, age, or gender differences of patients. During the XIX - early XX century, a similar situation was typical for the countries of Europe and Russia. In Heritage Village, near St. Petersburg in Florida, there is an open-air museum, the exposition of which includes the office of a family doctor along with other exhibits - the evidence of the life of immigrants, lovingly preserved by their descendants. There are residential and agricultural production buildings, churches, a railway station, a blacksmith shop, a manufactory shop. The museum of the family doctor's office is in excellent condition, its visit and excursion service are free of charge. It is a two-storey wooden building with all the rooms for receiving and serving patients. According to the concept of family medicine at the beginning of the XX century, the tasks of the doctor were: to help patients and their families throughout their lives; to treat patients and take measures to preserve their health; to ensure the availability of all types of medical care to most people at any time of the day, and the patient and his family members were perceived as a whole, and the doctor himself - as a direct guarantor of the well-being of the whole family.