American women physicians in 2000: a history in progress.

This article surveys major trends in the history of women physicians in American medicine during the 20th century, noting especially factors that have elicited renewed and increasingly public attention during the past two decades. These include the challenges of achieving greater professional visibility while also balancing family and career, of sustaining women physicians' legacy of commitment to women's health and primary care medicine without reinforcing the traditional stereotype that these are the specialties "best suited" to women doctors, and of addressing the need for more ethnic and racial diversity in the medical profession. Other recent developments include the leveling off of the number of women entering medical school and the increasing tendency of both men and women physicians to practice as employees.

Empathy as a hermeneutic practice.

This essay will argue for the centrality of empathy in the doctor-patient relationship-as a core of ethically sound, responsible therapeutics. By "empathy," I intend an explicitly hermeneutic practice, informed by a reflexive understanding of patient and self. After providing an overview of the history of the concept of empathy in clinical medicine, I discuss current definitions and the use of Balint groups in residency training as a way to develop empathic competence in novice physicians.

Medical history in the undergraduate medical curriculum.

History has long played a role in the education of American physicians, but the uses of medicine's past have changed over time. In the late nineteenth century, some physicians taught medical history to their students to supply a sense of continuity with professional traditions in times of rapid and bewildering change. Other physicians believed that instruction in medical history would impart a sense of refinement to medical practitioners. In the late twentieth century, medical history is increasingly viewed as a significant dimension of the professional, intellectual, and humanistic development of medical students. Further, it is one of the principal means by which recent, radical changes in health care can be given needed perspective. The knowledge that medicine and the medical sciences are fundamentally social enterprises is an important lesson for medical students. Through exposure to the history of health care, students also learn that medical knowledge is itself subject to change and is acquired in specific contexts. In the 1990s, medical history is taught in a variety of settings. In some schools, history is integrated into the teaching of medical humanities. Where medical history is institutionally distinct from the humanities, courses in medical history may be either elective or required. In order to reach students at every stage of their medical education, historians and clinicians can join forces to teach history in innovative and flexible programs.