In doing so, it often loses sight of the whole. So scientific medicine tends to reduce people to bodies and bodies to their parts. Disease has meaning only as an enemy to be fought. The science of medicine focuses on the biologic fact of disease, the art of medicine on the patient's experience of illness. Without art, medicine treats only the body, when it's the life that is broken.
Scientific medicine aims to find the one best treatment for each disease.
Everyone with the same disease is presumed to be the same, and quality medical care is measured by how it conforms to the one best protocol. Once the doctor used scientific studies as a guide to design a treatment for the patient, to fit the treatment to the individual. Now we fit the individual patient into the currently accepted treatment. Dissatisfaction with health care is high, and keeps rising. Patients want to be treated as individuals, they want to be respected and listened to, they want their humanness acknowledged.