Post-modern Medicine

Abstract

After refering to modernism and post-moder­nism as the great cultural universes that fullfil­ led the XXth century, the Author tries to demons­ trate that one can also talk about a modern and a post-modern Medicine. The first, born with the discovery of penicilin and sulphamides, is marked by a certain optimism, the growth of a powerfull pharmaceutical industry the height of Surgery and the birth of the Welfare-State. The hallmarks of the second are a general disillusion, the inva­sion of the new technologies, the progressive reduction of the weight of traditional Surgery and the colapse of the Welfare-State.