ABSTRACT
The twentieth-century success of curative techniques has transformed most physicians' conceptions of themselves as practitioners. In recent years the courts have sought to readjust a balance against physicians locking 'themselves and their patients with a progressively univalent choicemaking-choiceless role allocation'. But the judges have done so at the cost of placing themselves in the same authoritarian role. They fail to see themselves as participants in a dialogue between physicians and patients, as instruments to unsettle the rigidity of role allocation that the stress of illness provokes in both patient and physician. By the time of the establishment of the National Health Service in 1946-1948, rational Whiggery was almost, but not quite, triumphant. Moreover, and centrally, 'medical care always addresses, in some guise, the issue of mortality'. In extreme cases, the struggle concerning the patient's identity remains an issue throughout the relationship.
