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battlefield and care for the wounded. The conditions of warfare limit what he can expect to do. He cannot expect to maximize the well being of the 'wounded'; he is only expected to reduce suffering and save lives. Would it be too farfetched to conceive of modem medical practice as operating under similarly conditions, that is, the "warfare" of everyday life and the kinds of limitations that place limits on the expectations of the physician. But it would seem that more is required of medicine in everyday life even if it can be compared to "warfare." The physician should not be modeled upon the 'medic.' And worse, if the situation of medical practice today does lend to such a comparison, then we do need to look closely at what is going on in medicine me such that such a comparison begins to make sense.
In today's drug culture we all know the tendency is to look for the pharmaceutical quick fix or silver bullet in health care. The abuses involved here are too numerous to mention but surely though slowly becoming known. Although a silver bullet or two have been found in the history of medical research, this would not justify modeling the whole of health care intervention upon this fact. To consider the body as fundamentally biochemical, when the evidence for its at least equally fundamental electromagnetic nature is obvious, is a major limitation if not catastrophic error. Matters are worse if the tendency toward chemical symptom treatment leads pharmaceutical research to package symptoms as disease entities, which then their designer drugs can "cure", that is; suppress. It seems there has been a massive regression from the treatment of persons, to the treatment of illnesses to the treatment of disease entities. We need to recover the person as a whole and regard his/her realization of well being as being the goal and raison d'etre of Medicine. The liberation of 'vital life’, the elan vital of life, is the purpose of Medicine not the maintenance of functionality in an ill society.
The above discussion can only scratch the surface of an opening to real discourse regarding the state of medicine today. There is not a quick fix 'cure' for this situation, at least on the terms which medicine too often applies to its own charge. Medicine today is sick and its diagnosis is yet to be had. There is no “genetic” solution to this problem. It is philosophical, moral and social in nature.
Possibly we all need to ask ourselves today just how well we do feel. Possibly such a "check-up" with our inner doctor can stimulate the kind of discussion we must have in order to fully awaken the medical and social communities to the contemporary crisis in medicine.
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