The physician’s job, said Voltaire, is to amuse the patient until nature heals the disease. Of course, Voltaire lived in the eighteenth century when patients would have been lucky if their physicians attempted no more than amusement. This was the age before antibiotics, anesthesia, and other innovations that define modern medicine. Today, the art of medicine is much more. Modern physicians have three responsibilities: to make a diagnosis, to offer a prognosis, and to create and implement a treatment plan. The last task, treatment, seems to be the essential one—the one that defines the physician’s therapeutic role. Nevertheless, this textbook...
