Should doctors leave the history of medicine to historians?

Tom Treasure cautions against claims of priority when writing on the history of medicine but then tells us that it was Theodore Palm who observed the connection between lack of sunlight and the development of rickets in 1888. ¹ However, as described previously in this journal by Dennis Gibbs, ² William Macewan had noted in 1880 that ‘want of pure air, light, and sunshine, bad or scant food supply, all tend to produce rickets’. He also noted that there were many people in the West Highlands of Scotland who subsisted on diets which were less nutritious than those of the poor in Scottish cities but who had more exposure to light and comparatively little rickets. ³

No doubt your readers will provide earlier examples!