Hippocratic messages for modern medicine (the vindication of Hippocrates)

Abstract

Medicine feels the need to combine more than ever the traditional concepts of Hippocrates in perfect balance with the enormous power of modern biotechnology. In our times, the old message 'go back to Hippocrates' sounds like a utopian vision. On the other hand, technological progress tends to remove modern medicine from its anthropocentric mission. The realistic message for tomorrow's physicians must be 'to go forward' together with his perennial humanistic values and clinical messages, combining the recent advances of biotechnology with the Hippocratic rationalism, which is based on logical reasoning, on careful clinical examination, and on a whole humane approach to the patient and his environment. Today's physician can still learn from the Hippocratic heritage and will need to be an expert Hippocratic physician, ever more humane and competent to use all new methods and facilities of basic dermatological research.