'Medicine as Science' uncovers the forgotten identity of medicine as a modern academic discipline. Many works on the history and sociology of science and medicine have overshadowed this identity with a focus on medicine as a modern profession. Through a historical sociology and using a conceptual historical lens, this book examines the identity work of medical science from the inception of modern research universities to current discourses on science and medicine. Showing how important institutions and basic concepts of medical science emerged and revealing their cultural origins, it explains how the idea of biomedicine has today come to mean the intimate connection between laboratory research and the prospects of better healthcare.