Medicine [antikvár]

Opposing forces are puliing the medical profession in different directions. The physician is asked to act morc responsively to the patient's needs by visiting his home, giving him more time, maintaining and even raising standards of practice-in short, to increase his professionalization. At the samc time, the physician is increasingly cast as a tradesman, a "provider" of health care, taxed as a commercial entrepreneur, put under pressure to shorten his course of study, advertise the cost of his wares, and submit his performance to auditing by lay examining groups. Educators, consumers, and legislators ürge the physician to broaden his interests and become holistic in caring for each patient, but simultaneously-notably in the United States-they threaten him with recertification tests which emphasize his technical information, not his cultural breadth. Indeed, many of the same medical institutions which profess an interest in "humanism" offer no courses in history, art, philosophy, or sociology. Furthermore, medical schools, while asking universities to send them wcll-rounded premedical students, actually tend to judge applicants' suitability on the basis of grades in the sciences, not in the arts. Political and economic events clearly indicate to the medical student and the public that society is likely to expect tbc physician of the future to concern himself with social justice, the environment, and governmental regulation. Yet, even when an attempt is made in courses offered in community medicine to deal with these subjects, they usually focus on the "here and now," not the historical underpinning. Thus, both the young graduate and the experienced practitioner often find themselves self-righteously in opposition to what they assume is a brand-new intrusion by outside forces into their profession; or else they plunge into the "new order," joining hands with those who condemn the practicing physicians as narrow-minded, inefFectual mercenaries. They behave as ifnone of these confrontations had ever happened before. The student, practitioner, and public marvei at the contemporary medical scene with its enlarged scientific understanding, remarkable diagnostic tools, effective therapeutic methods, and broadened attitudes toward the whole patient. Nevertheless, they are apt to view today's practices either as having always been there or contrarily as if they were unexpected bright metcors suddenly dropped from a dark sky. Usually, neither the practitioner nor his patient understands how the doctor came to be whatever he is; how his methods developed from the past; how his present ethical principles were reached. Surely it would help to see these developments in historical context. Through the many pictures, the captions, and the text, we hope that this book will introduce the subject and help suggest that medicine is more than just medicines; that healing and healers comprise more than onc discipline. Indeed, we hope it is