“What is to be done? Burning questions of our movement”

The paper suggests that a danger which faces the integrated study of health and medicine in Africa is a failure to attend closely enough at this early stage to the differences in concepts and taxonomies originating in each contributing specialism. This is because the new division of the subject which accompanies an integrated perspective upon it no longer follows the division of labour which used to be, broadly, between disciplines. So as those stark but comforting contrasts blur, it is important to keep hold of a robust and usable conceptual apparatus if we are to avoid deep confusion. Therefore, preferring to risk oversimplification rather than precocious complication, each of the three contributing disciplines—medicine, anthropology and history—is examined and the burning questions of the moment in each are proposed. In this process, the contributions which each can make to the new alignment become obvious. Equally, the limitations upon the new alignment are exposed, and the paper ends with a note of caution.