La medicina como narrativa.

This is and address delivered by the author on being elected Member of the Chilean Academy of Letters. It develops the notion of medicine as a metatext composed by different "texts": the physiological, the introspective and the behavioral. Each of these narratives derives its meaning from the "context" provided by the others and is articulated differently according to the social roles allotted to the participants in communicative transactions. Medicine, as communicative praxis, is a science of actions rather than objects which can be understood as process, procedure and product. In the light of these concept the distinction between illness, disease and sickness receives a new emphasis.