This article gives a critical account of shifting approaches to prominent theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues within the history of medicine in recent decades. It offers a synthetic account of the state of the art, an opportunity to take stock of where the history of medicine has been and where it now resides. It attempts to establish, and promote discussion about some of the major challenges facing future historians of medicine in terms of the questions, sources, and methods that should direct and animate the evolution of the discipline. This article hopes to provide both seasoned and aspiring scholars with a substantial empirical and theoretical platform for future research and with a constructive basis for more informed discussion of the intellectual place and ideological purpose of medical history.