The structure of medical education.

The recurrent failure to adequately conceptualize the medical meaning of 'diease' is explained as a function of the way this is taught in the curriculum. It is not transmitted within the formal curriculum but within the internal structural relationships of the medical course. The limits of this particular definition engendered during medical education are described, and it is concluded that curriculum reform which stresses change in content and neglects educational structure will fail to modify this notion of disease.