ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates that the biomedical model does not exist in a vacuum. Furthermore, medicalization does not consist simply of the application of increasingly sophisticated procedures and techniques. The underside of modern medicine has been referred to by Foucault as the “man-the-Machine” model. Yet, from the early Greeks to the end of the medieval period, medical intervention was quite convoluted. Critics argued that knowledge would not progress until nature is deanimated, or transformed into a “plenum of passive matter driven by mechanical forces”. Key to sound clinical judgments are unbiased observation, accurate measurement, and a straightforward plan of action. Physicians are expected to make correct decisions about ailments. From a scientific point of view, an important consequence is that a departure from the norm can be detected the moment it occurs. Much more important may be rethinking the general philosophy that supports biomedicine.
