De la communication en médecine à l'épreuve de la mort

The physician works both on the present time and on the long term by treating an evolutionary process. The discussion of a case in medicine is determined by the inequality between the professional and personal qualities of the physician; on the other hand, it applies to living subjects whose variability is the rule. In order to shed light on this relationship between those two subjects, we will first analyze Oliver Sacks' text Persistence of Vision, written at the time when the famous neurologist becomes a patient himself. Then, we propose to examine the three aspects of communication between the doctor and his patient: the social function of the medical gesture, the semantics specific to the hospital and the difference between the professional ethics and the affect of the suffering person.