Abstract

This chapter explores the history of the doctor-patient relationship in the West. Beginning with a discussion of how this relationship was conceived in antiquity, it examines how the Hippocratic ideal became associated with the Christian duty to care for the sick and needy; how the beliefs of antiquity were questioned by Renaissance physicians who wanted to “see for themselves”; how professional ethics based on virtue arose in the eighteenth century in response to increased competition between practitioners; and how the modern ideal of the doctor-patient relationship based on a personal connection, careful physical examination, and trust arose in the late nineteenth century. Then, with a focus on recent cultural and structural challenges to this modern model, it considers how we might reconstruct the doctor-patient relationship to address recent challenges, such as patients’ skepticism about doctors’ genuine concern for them as people and doctors’ concern with patients’ lack of compliance and growing challenges to their authority.