Adolescent medicine: the development of a new specialty.

The purpose of this article is to review the developments that contributed to the appearance of Adolescent Medicine. A historical account is followed by the application of two related sociological concepts: a) Rosen's hypothesis of changes in the attitudes of the medical profession to specialization and b) the process of segmenting theory as developed by Butcher and Strauss. The article concludes with a discussion of the implication of those theories for the future of the new specialty.