Ethnography in the doctor’s «mission»

Abstract

The article explores the genealogy of the «ideal type» of doctor constructed in the 19th century, following the hygienic-sanitary phase of the medicalization process, until its current crisis. The central argument is that this «ideal type» was built by doctors combining their clinical skills with a systematic ethnographic view of the patient’s environment when the creation of the hospital patient was intended to eliminate the social and cultural context of the disease. The role of ethnography would therefore be essential in the construction of the doctor’s «mission», the image of which would be popularized, by the 20th century, by the representations elaborated in literature and the arts. The crisis of ethnography in medical education would have displaced it to subaltern sectors of medicine and facilitated his outsourcing in the form of medical anthropology. The current paradox is the insistence on vindicating the «ideal type» but, above all, the recognition that ethnography is still fundamental in current medical practice.