Doctors: The Biography of Medicine

Still, for all of the transformations wrought by the masterful new engines of medicine and by their multitudinous varieties of fuel, there is one singular ingredient of the art of healing that should not be allowed to vanish. That ingredient, so basic and so changeless, is a relationship; it takes place in the quiet surroundings of the sickroom or

However, by concentrating their treatment not on the actual diagnosis but on the patient and his environment, and by making him a member of his own therapeutic team, they achieved successes that eluded their rivals;

Absent are the glib pronouncements and fuzzy circumlocutions that earlier writers had used to hide their ignorance.

They recognized, as does every intern, that these are not God-given gifts, but can only be acquired by diligent practice and endless striving toward the ultimately unattainable goal of perfection. A director of surgical training in one of our great university hospitals would be hard put to improve on the counsel offered by Hippocrates two and a hal

Specificity of diagnosis does not help the sufferer unless it can be followed by specificity of treatment,

The “normal condition of existence” interested Rudolf Virchow as much as the abnormal. He believed, and time has vindicated him, that it is by the maintenance, or restoration, of equity between the basic units of life and their surroundings that health is to be most successfully nurtured, whether of the individual or the entire organism.

The Berlin press badgered the Prussian ruler, Frederick William IV, to do something about the disaster. Finally, the public outcry forced the government to form a commission of investigation, under the direction of the Privy Councillor for Health. Rudolf Virchow’s “strongest desire” was fulfilled when he was named medical officer to the commission.