The nature of healing: the modern practice of medicine

As the sick person has increasingly become the focus of medicine, there have been repeated but mostly failed attempts to achieve both technological and humanistic goals in caring for patients.

This approach is flawed because there is only one ultimate goal -- the well-being of the patient.

Whether it involves the personal action of the clinician or the use of technology, everything done toward the goal of well-being is part of the healing enterprise.

In this book, Eric Cassell explores what sickness is, what persons are, and how to understand function and its impairments.

He explains healing skills and actions, as well as the nature of healing for sick and suffering patients.

This book concludes with a discussion of the moral basis of the relationship between patient and healer, as well as the goals of healing.