ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies some patterns that are important in the understanding of medicine and primary care. Both medicine and philosophy as dialogue begin with an inter-human event. Part of that common knowledge is the construction of health and illness around the notion of health being a balanced state, and illness being the loss of that balance. The role of the doctor is to make sense out of the experience of loss, and to help restore the balance of health. A strand engrained in one's common knowledge is the acceptance of the mind-body split and the mechanistic/clockwork understanding of the workings of the body and nature at large. In this sense, medicine can be classed among the technologies. But medicine also sets out to modify the behavior of individuals and societies, and thus has roots in the behavioral sciences. Finally, medicine operates through a personal, and therefore an ethical, relationship intended to 'help' the person to 'better' health.
