ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the Story of Dr. X and Patient Y. Patient Y is a 17-year-old woman who presents in the emergency department with severe abdominal pain. Dr. X takes a careful history. While talking he mentally continues his own analysis of a possible cause for her pain. He does laboratory and radiological tests. She has terrible infection in her fallopian tubes. She had denied sexual activity. Her cultures grew gonorrhea. Dr. X typifies the physician who espouses the biomedical model. The biomedical model thus embraces both reductionism, the philosophic view that complex phenomena are ultimately derived from a single primary principle, and mind-body dualism, the doctrine that separates the mental from the somatic. The philosopher Descartes, however, played an important role in the seventeenth century in diminishing the influence of the established Christian church in that he popularized the idea that mind and body are distinct and thus encouraged the emerging scientific approach to disease.
