ABSTRACT

In its simplest terms Parsons' model suggests that a patient perceives himself as ill and accordingly presents himself to his doctor. His doctor is skilled having been trained in scientific medicine. Views of medical practice can be classified into three types: scientific, participatory, and Hippocratic or classical. Each influences the techniques of regulation affecting medicine. Medicine adopts the aims and methods of the natural sciences: it seeks to understand physical processes; and, it insists upon proper experimental design, validity of observation and method, correct logic and verifiable conclusions. The Hippocratic ideal is broad enough to encompass ideas of experimental science, patient-centred but doctor-directed medicine, a guild approach to practice and knowledge, and in large measure each of the modern approaches to health care. Today the mysticism of medicine is twofold. It maintains the elements of gentlemanly behaviour and it is centred on the clinic and the body which is exposed there.