title: [The re-enchantment of medicine].
abstract: This is the speech delivered by Bernardino Piñera MD, a catholic bishop, at the time of his incorporation as an Honorary Member of the Chilean Academy of Medicine. Medicine, health, and life, suffering and death are endowed with marvelous elements of reenchantment; turn pain into well-being, anxiety into serenity, fear into confidence; give sense to life and death, live and make men feel their human dignity. Many a patient miss the times when the doctor was a friend who knew him, not through biochemical or imaging diagnosis but through intimate conversation; when he was familiar with his character, his family and environment; when he could die in peace at home, surrounded by his family and thinking of God according to his religious beliefs. A profound change in medical conscience is needed, a philosophical and cultural change, allowing "high touch" to dominate and use "high tech". Let us transform the words sick or patient into "sick man" or "suffering man". Let us think of death as a culminating moment of life on earth, not as a failure of Medicine, but as the joyful acceptance of human destiny.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Piñera
mesh_terms: D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D012068:Religion and Medicine
vernacular_title: El reencantamiento de la medicina.