Spike J
Division of Medical Humanities, University of Rochester Medical Center, NY 14642.
Theor Med. 1991 Dec;12(4):359-65. doi: 10.1007/BF00489894.
The dearth of philosophical contributions to medicine has recently been discussed in a series of articles in this journal. The present article focuses on physicians' lack of training in philosophy as a part of the explanation of the scarcity of works in philosophy of medicine. In section I I outline two philosophy courses which would be reasonable additions to the medical school curriculum required of all medical students. In section II I suggest two other philosophy courses as electives in a medical education. All four courses are in the fields of epistemology and metaphysics, and so will help others see the relevance to medicine of philosophical fields other than ethics.