The Philosophical Diseases of Medicine and their Cure

At all times physicians were bound to pursue not only medical tasks, but to reflect also on the many anthropological and metaphysical aspects of their discipline, such as on the nature of life and death, of health and sickness, and above all on the vital ethical dimensions of their practice. For centuries, almost for two millennia, how­ ever, those who practiced medicine lived in a relatively clearly defined ethical and implicitly philosophical or religious 'world-order' within which they could