The growth of knowledge and its effects on the practice of medicine have been issues of philosophical and ethical interest for several decades and will remain so for many years to come. The outline of the present volume was conceived nearly three years ago. In 1987, a conference on this theme was held in Maastricht, the Netherlands, on the occasion of the founding of the European Society for Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care (ESPMH). Most of the chapters of this book are derived from papers presented at that meeting, and for the purpose of editing the book Stuart Spicker, Ph. D. , joined two founding members of ESPMH, Henk ten Have and Gerrit Kimsma. The three of them successfully brought together a number of interesting contribu­ tions to the theme, and ESPMH is grateful and proud to have initiated the production of this volume. The Society intends that annual meetings be held in different European countries on a rotating basis and to publish volumes related to these meetings whenever feasible. In 1988, the second conference was held in Aarhus, Denmark on "Values in Medical Decision Making and Resource Allocation in Health Care". In 1989, a meeting was held in Czestochowa, Poland, on "European Traditions in Philosophy of Medicine. From Brentano to Bieganski". It is hoped that these conferences and the books to be derived from them, will initiate a new European tradition, lasting well into the 21 st century! P. J.

Inhalt

Section I / Medicine, History, and Culture.- Knowledge and Practice in European Medicine: The Case of Infectious Diseases.- Frames of Reference and the Growth of Medical Knowledge: L.Fleck and M.Foucault.- Medical Knowledge and Medical Action: Competing visions.- Section II / Philosophy of Science and the Growth of Medical Knowledge.- Function and Value of Medical Knowledge in Modern Diseases.- The Growth of Medical Knowledge: An Epistemological Exploration.- The Development of Population Research on Causes of Death: Growth of Knowledge or Accumulation of Data?.- Comments on Wulff's, Thung's, and Lindahl's Essays on The Growth of Medical Knowledge.- Section III / Image of Man and the Growth of Medical Knowledge.- Medicine, Anthropology, and the Human Body.- Invulnerability and Medicine's "Promise" of Immortality: Changing Images of the Human Body During the Growth of Medical Knowledge.- Values and the Growth of Medical Knowledge.- Notes on Contributors.