De taal van de geneeskunde

- The idiom of physicians has evolved from Latin to the genetic code, in parallel with a change in the paradigm of disease. From the end of the 18th century, disease was no longer attributed to a disturbance of the body equilibrium, but to a localised abnormality – of organs, cells and eventually genes. A further step in this direction is the proposed creation of physician-engineers to replace broken parts in the human machinery. Such blind reductionism fails to offer a solution for somatisation, a scourge of modern western societies. Even organ specialists should be able to revert to the holistic notion of ‘disequilibrium’ to account for unexplained symptoms. For the medical profession, an education in the humanities is no less important than that in science.