[Continuity and change in medical ethos (author's transl)].

The report develops first of all a general concept of ethos and categories for comprehending its structure [2]. Classical hippocratic ethos then emerges as a "modell" which medical treatment standardizes as a matter of "practical" science-oriented values in the service of the "private" welfare of the patient [3]. The will, under changing conditions of medical practice, to permanently engage the substance of the ethos, demands a) consciousness of the "practical" character of the misunderstanding of medicine as a theoretical physical science, b) recognition of the importance of the "private" doctor-patient relationship vs. the widening of a purely social objective, c) orientation to the whole needs of the patient in opposition to a technologically created "depersonalization".