As part of a history project for the New York Academy of Medicine, I'm investigating the formalization of the divide between science and medicine.
I've begun by looking at the difference in how scientists for biologically-related disciplines and medical personnel are educated.
The immediate response of "different training for different roles" ignores how much those roles have come to be intertwined. It, moreover, doesn't speak to the history of the medical curriculum nor the later stages of physician education, such as fellowship. Fellowships often require the trainee to publish scientific material in a peer-reviewed journal to complete. Similarly, graduate schools do encourage their students to take clinical courses, for example a neuroscientist-in-training taking neurology courses.
For a brief period in the 1700s-1950s in Western Europe the line between a scientists and physician was blurred. Jenner and Salk were active physicians who developed vaccines. All recent MDs who won the Nobel Prize for medicine spend all their time in laboratory research.
My question then becomes that of what about modern clinical practice entails an education disparate from that of scientific education when there are historical suggestions that this divide is artificial?
Aside: I have no formal training in historical research. I welcome critiques both about the content as well as my thought process.