[The Identity of Medicine in the Thought of Edmund D. Pellegrino].

This essay addresses Pellegrino's thought on Philosophy of Medicine; it also provides an approach to his concerns on the changing relationship between patients and physicians which took place in the late twentieth century in the United States and, finally, to his contribution to the identity of Medicine debate. From an Aristotelian-Thomist way of thinking, and from a phenomenological approach to the medical act, he identifies the ending of Medicine and also its limits concerning to ″healing″, in his two moments, curing and helping, which includes caring. Medicine, the essence of Medicine, tends to healing, for this relationship between patient and physician tends to a ″good″ which ultimately ends up being its finality. Medical ethics germinates within this relationship, the clinical encounter, as a universal experience of illness, pain and humane limitation. Therefore, healing is the essence of Medicine and truly its genuine identity. Besides healing any other act is not strictly medical. From the doctrine of Pellegrino emerges that original and classic idea of ″the good of the patient″ as the main and ruling principle of medical ethics. Medical act is no longer just a technique, a technical act, but also a moral enterprise, which our teacher relates to the so called ″medical virtues″. But this ″good″ may not be understood nowadays in the old Hippocratic terms and should also be related to the dignity of the patients and to his or her moral autonomy. And accordingly an updating of the concept of good is demanded by the teacher who, to this intent, stresses four main aspects which are summoned in the article.