Doctors, not medical science, deal with the hard facts of sickness. The gap between the two cultures of medicine [the science of medicine and the human microcosm of individual patients Ed. note} is bridged in the person of the physician. The doctor (this person who does the doctoring) is an integrator-someone who can "put a spin on" medical science that makes it "work" for individual patients. This aspect of doctoring is tacit, not manifest, and virtually invisible-we all think (wrongly) that medical science is tuned to the needs of this particular or that particular person with (for example) a heart attack. The doctor believes this to be the case and so does the patient. Of course everyone knows that the "human" aspects of doctoring compassion, caring, empathy and so on-need the doctor as a person. But there is more to it.....The person of the doctor is also necessary to add values to medical science so that it will work for particular patients.

Eric J. Cassell, M.D.
The Nature of Suffering
1991, Oxford Univ. Press, p.106.