General Medicine without Time

Abstract

Access to medical knowledge in relation to the main problems that constitute knowledge and work of the doctor can be done in several complementary ways. One of these roads is historical knowledge. If we study the form and content of medical textbooks at different times we could see how they reflect the dominant medical theory at each time according to the publication dates and so we could detect trends on the concepts of etiology, diagnosis, treatment, etc. of the different health problems. The contemporary debate on the development of science and technology, part of the assumption that science and technology have a linear development but the study of history affirms that the fundamental principles of medicine do not change in spite of scientific, technological or socio-political advances. Our profession has an immutable base of assistance, concern for others and curiosity of being the patient as a person, the axis of medical practice, respect for the autonomy of the patient, meticulous observation, etc. Some of the elements that define the medical being in an immutable and without time or epoch way are: 1-variability and induction; 2-research; 3-biopsicosocial, functional and somatic; 4-diagnosis; 5-healthy and sick: the disease develops as a time of life; 6-the anamnesis is almost everything and the complementary tests are not almost anything; 7-course, prognosis, evolution and context and 8-treatment depends on individual internal and external contexts.