ABSTRACT
Symptoms are bodily sensations or mental states that call for medical help. The symptoms may with a diagnosis acquire meaning, though often enough brittle and provisional. The path to diagnosis and recovery generally involves the physician, in case of more severe illness. The name of the disease, the diagnosis, makes an abstraction of all uniquely personal aspects and focuses on the common traits that unite this individual’s condition with a number of other individuals’ conditions. The success of modern medicine will of course depend on its degree of control over the course of diseases. The diagnostic ambition will then be to exclude the dangerous alternatives with sufficient certainty, and then treat the minor condition. The period of diagnostic procedures—whether short or extended—is a delicate phase of dialogue between doctor and patient. Modern medicine has created new kinds of diagnostic situations.
