The professionalization of medicine, during its acceleration between the 19th and 20th century, has certainly reduced the humanitarian ethos in favor of scientific knowledge and technical expertise. This idea has now become a common thought among many scholars who have dealt with the Health profession. We are now faced with a question that is primarily concerned with the unity of the medical profession: as today, can we still speak of one great profession? Secondly, can we still speak of identity when referring to the medical profession, and if so, what kind? There are many factors that have contributed to the identity crisis of the figure of physicians. Such crisis not only poses questions of ethical and ontological character, but has also an objective, everlasting socio-cultural-anthropological connotation. Doctors tried to maintain their autonomy and also their dominance, while the cultural and social structures regulating the doctor/patient relationship have lost their definition in an ongoing transformation process.
