The Auspicious Moment in Somatic Medicine

Thanks to the long arm of coincidence, the building of the New York Academy of Medicine provides a fitting starting point for my theme, the role of kairos in somatic medicine. The frieze at the third floor bears an inscription which commemorates the famous first aphorism of Hippocrates: “Life is short, art is long, the auspicious moment sharply limited, experience untrustworthy, judgment difficult.” It is a telling fact that the frieze omits the reference to the “auspicious moment.” What is quoted are the statements which still apply to modern medicine although it is based nowadays on the model of physics and chemistry. This development was inspired by the practical results of scientific progress in the understanding of inanimate nature. Application of the laws of physics and chemistry put tremendous powers under the control of man. It was therefore natural that the same approach has been used in dealing with animate nature. Since the healthy and the pathological processes in the organism can be defined in terms of physics and chemistry, medicine undertook to treat somatic diseases accordingly and many spectacular successes were achieved. Thus the advances of scientific medicine became part of the “conquest of nature” which ranges from atomic fission to space travel.

Recently we have become more aware of the wisdom of the last two statements of the Hippocratic aphorism: “Experience is untrustworthy, judgment difficult.” The successes of medicine and science have entailed new and distressing health hazards. Tuberculosis deaths have been replaced by cancer deaths;¹ artificial feeding has endangered the physical and psychological development of infants’ and mothers³ in unexpected ways; antibiotics have produced new problems of infectious disease control; chemical and radiological poisoning of our planet has become alarming. The rush toward miracle cures and magic bullets has turned the comical plight of The Sorcerer's Apprentice into a host of frightening realities.

Dr.