The body as meeting place, between limits and possibilities of general medical practice in the crisis of Western civilization. Telling stories of meetings with Italian and foreign women and men, it is made a reflection about some implications of the body and of the dualism mind-body, in the field of therapeutic relationship in general practice. You meet people who "bring" their own body to the doctor, as if it belonged to another person, but you meet also people who understand the illness before it appears and before it can be understood by the medical science. There are some implication of a silent learning from the practice, which born from the comparing the different cultures and the gender, and also from the elaboration of the frustration of the medicine limits and from the elaboration of the conflict which is present in every patient doctor relationship. Finally you can find some reflections about the specificity of general practice, that is founded on a long term relationship and on a holistic approach to the person, who is not only a patient. Maybe we can imagine the General Practice as the female face of modern medicine.
Keywords: Dualism mind-body, culture, gender, West’s crisis, medicine, limits of medicine, general practice, care, cure, learning.