Breadth of Concerns of Community Medicine

To the Editor.— The reply to your fourth EDITORIAL, "Community Medicine: A Concept in Search of a Definition" (224:522, 1973) is eloquently stated in the three editorials that preceded it. The three editorials based upon papers withinThe Journaldiscuss the relationship between occupation and disease pattern, the importance of research on adverse drug reactions enabling physicians to assess the cost-benefit ratios of prescribed medicines, and an increased incidence of coronary disease among urbanized bedouin. The editorials all pose problems, but give no final answers. They indicate the changing face of disease as it appears to the practicing clinician and demonstrate the complexity of problems facing the doctor in the community. Yet, Dr. Ricketts, in the following editorial on community medicine, remarks that there is no need for such "a splinter department" and that the subject matter of community medicine does not warrant "the dignity of an academic title." The