Renegades, Rebels, and Revolutionaries: Making Medicine a Better Public Trust.

The definition of medicine as a public trust was summarized by Schroeder et al in 1989: “[M]edicine is entrusted by society to improve the health of the public through education, patient care and research. In return, medicine receives significant public funding, respect, and autonomy” [1]. Medicine’s role as a public trust has a past, present, and a speculative future. Key institutions in the 19th century functioned as a “Silicon Valley” of medicine, bringing forth important contributions and defining the role of medicine as a public trust.