To read the newspapers, the whole practice of medicine suddenly has been transformed from the learned profession it used to be into a high technology, beset on all sides by scientific hubris. And complaints about this perceived change are heard everywhere. There is too much science, it is claimed. Doctors are unable to deal at first hand with their patients, it is said, because of the sheer mass of machinery required for medical care. There is, it is asserted, such a high technology needed for health care that no society can cope with the cost. If it continues, medicine will be done in by its own scientific success.