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This article focuses on the definition of comprehensive medicine. The people who are concerned with the teaching of comprehensive medicine find a real need for a precise definition of it. The definitive terms found in the literature, such as the whole person, the person behind the disease and so on are too imprecise. Even if they convey the 'what is' of comprehensive medicine, they do not tell the 'how to.' The comprehensiveness of medicine arises out of the incorporation into medical thinking, teaching and practice of the applicable knowledge of dynamic psychiatry, psychology and sociology. Comprehensive medicine, then, is the conviction, born out of experience, that the medical care of patients can be improved now by the utilization of psychodynamic knowledge and sociological knowledge, along with the generally available biological skills. Perhaps the most significant feature of comprehensive medicine is that it is patient-oriented as opposed to the disease orientation of most of present day medicine.

The article discusses the manner and ways of a doctor while treating patients. The doctor in a white coat, pushed open the door in which the patient was lying. The door had no lock or latch so that he needed only to push it and felt no need to knock. He announced of being a doctor and stood and standing, surveyed the patient-thing with a practiced eye. The patient quickly, crushed out his half-smoked cigarette. The doctor asked about the problem from the patient and added several questions related to the duration of the trouble, exact location of the pain, previous illness, marital status, children, smoking or drinking habit and job. He adviced for certain tests and said that the details of trouble can be revealed only after the test.