Rationality in medicine

Kant taught that, ‘Where we find . . . illusions and fallacies . . . , there seems to be required a . . . code of mental legislation . . . founded upon the nature of reason and the objects of its exercise . . . which no fallacy will be able to withstand or escape from . . . ' I address, critically, the Flexnerian and EBM conceptions of scientific medicine and Groopman's ideas about errors of reasoning in the practice of medicine; I underscore the need for theory of medicine, founded on reason and governing cognition about and in the practice of medicine; and I sketch the dawn of rationality in medicine.