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The shorter phrase “medical anthropology” seems first to have been used by P.T. Regester (1956) and then by Khwaja Hasan and B.G. Prasad (1959), while an article by James Roney carried the phrase in its title (1959). But what did this label describe? What tensions did it encompass? Did these tensions exhibit different characteristics in different global settings?

Building on previous historical reviews (including Anderson 2018; Browner 1997; Claudill 1953; Colson and Selby 1974; Fabrega 1971; Foster 1974; Foster and Anderson 1978; Good 1994; Hasan 1975; Lock and Nichter 2002; McElroy 1986; Polgar 1962; Scotch 1963; Sobo 2004; Todd and Ruffini 1979; Weidman 1986), I examine medical anthology’s rise as a named subfield. This process unfolded initially in the USA, where the great majority of medical anthropologists were, and still are, concentrated. However, anthropology is an international discipline: The subfield’s emergence depended on inputs from anthropologists of a variety of nationalities, as well as from related disciplines. Global variation and concerns that emerged as the subdiscipline matured also are key to the story. To foreshadow: In medical anthropology’s early days as a distinct subfield, debate centered on the applied–theoretical divide, the generalist–specialist distinction, and the contrast between physical (now “biological”) and cultural perspectives. Later developments related to the evolving definition of culture, the influence of various instantiations of critical theory, the role of extra-disciplinary interaction, and concern for social justice and for decolonizing the field.