Bedside skills: a 50-year personal retrospective.

Medicine bears a long tradition of detailed medical history and physical examination. These standard techniques are now being shunned in favor of an emphasis on laboratory studies. Yet there should be no contest. The clinician needs both bedside skills and appropriately selected laboratory testing. High-touch and high-tech medicine are not incompatible. When the physician uses them together, he or she is less likely to be misled.