This monograph is the first book in medical sociology that comprehensively describes the research conceptions of the co-founder of the European medical sociology, Professor Magdalena Sokołowska (1922–1989). The study characterizes the stages of formation of the scientific foundations of medical sociology in Europe: the evolution of approach to the phenomena of health and illness from the medical to sociological perspective, the development of feminist studies in medical sociology, the emergence of scientific identity of the subdiscipline, models of interdisciplinary studies on health, and research into complementary and alternative medicine.