As part of its concern with the environmental causes of disease, medical research tries to comprehend the nature of social processes and their implications for human health: an endeavour calling for sociological concepts and methods (Susseret al, 1985). Medical needs are mirrored within sociology, which has never been confined to study of the workings of society, but has always concerned itself also with their impact on individuals and on public health. The importance of cooperation between the two disciplines is thus indisputable. Nevertheless, interprofessional relationships have never been easy, and Pflanz's dictum, that “the history of the relationship between sociology and medicine is … mainly a history of unsuccessful encounters” (Pflanz, 1976), remains substantially true today. The difficulties have been ascribed to interdisciplinary tensions of the kind that arise when a relatively young academic profession seeks to assert its autonomy in a relationship with an older-established and more powerful one. Martin (1976), stressing the dangers that can result from mutually false expectations, invoked the analogy of a marriage in which: