a) To deepen the bound between Human and Social Sciences and Medicine, exploring their mutual inteligibility; <br />b) To define the specificity of Medicine within the field of knowledge in general; <br />c) To investigate the extent to which the quality of doctor-patient relationship contributes to the efficacy of medical acts;<br />d) To show the relevance of Human and Social Sciences in the work of some doctors (such as Sanches, Glisson, Stahl, Pinel and Claude Bernard) and the impact of their work on these sciences;<br />e) To understand different manners of articulating tradition and innovation in Medicine; <br />f) To grasp the scientific and socio-cultural meaning of the foundation of the Hospital in the 19th Century;<br />g) To scrutinize the most relevant debates and controversies not only within medical science but also between doctors and social scientists (ex. debate on judiciary astrology, between Descartes and Regius, between Leibniz and Stahl, and the debate on anaeshesia at the first half of the 19th century); <br />h) To characterize the medical ethos and analyse the main issues currently at stake in the field of Bioethics.