ABSTRACT
Anyone who prepares to judge* problems within a given discipline falls victim to a feeling of unease, subtle and deceitful at the same time. This unease is bound to increase when the judge is not a specialist, but an academic: someone who, by denition, loves to be involved in the problems of his time. If, to echo Hegel, philosophy is qualied as “one’s own time learnt with thought,” it should not seem at all strange for a nonphysician to wonder about the crisis that for decades has beset medicine’s knowledge and actions, despite the ability to enable a doubled life expectancy and improved health of the general public.
