[From disease to health: the individual, society, environment and culture].

With the onset of science-based medicine in the mid-19th century, environmental factors were almost totally discarded as health determinants. This was a complete rupture with the medical thinking which had prevailed since the time of Hippocrates. Yet, for the vast majority of mankind, harmony with environmental reality remains the most important determinant of good or ill health. This scission explains to a great extent the differences between traditional and Western medicine, which are based on entirely different concepts and on distinct paradigms. Environment as a health determinant--in its broadest definition to include both physical and social environments--is again being considered of importance as a result of better understanding of causality factors, and because of the influence of disciplines such as ecology and epidemiology. Here we show that human societies can develop different methods of adjusting to their environments, some of which would increase the risks of disease and others which can be considered as resistance factors of a social nature. Societies and individuals alike are not equal in relation to health risks.