The standard of modern university was the University of
Berlin founded in 1810 by Wilheim Humbolt. At this institution, for the first
time the laboratory, that was inside Academies and outside the universities,
started to be together with the traditional faculties. The Modern University
had the ideal to make the “cultural person” and this model spread around the
world.
After the Second World War, with the beginning of the
Postmodern Era, the University became also “postmodern”. So, pragmatism,
production, results, were the main objective of the university and not the “cultural
person”.
Together with these two movements in history, the Medical
Thinking and Medical Attitude had also two patterns. In the Modern Period, from
1800 to 1950, the Medicine was also idealistic, humanistic. In the postmodern
era it became pragmatic, reductionist, dehumanized...
We are in a time of “macro shift” as Erwin Lazlo said. The
first decade of the Millenium started with a time of transition, as we saw with
the tragedy of 2001 and the crises of 2008. The model of postmodern times is
exhausted. It does not work as before, even still working a little for while,
as a transition goes...
We are in a after-postmodern era, with new paradigms arising.
So, the postmodern model of medicine is changing. The Slow Medicine Movement is
a sign of a new way of teaching and pratice of medicine. In some way is a
return to the medicine of modern period; in another way is a new pattern to
deal and understand the technical progress of medicine.
