Medicine and thought-styles: on the 50th anniversary of the death of Ludwik Fleck (1896-1961).

l ast year, 2011, marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Ludwik Fleck, a physician, microbiologist [1] and a passionate philosopher of medicine [Figure 1]. Fleck suffered many of the humiliations that the 20th century inflicted upon the Jews of Eastern Europe [2]. He experienced racial persecution during World War II and in the years preceding it. He survived that long period of brutal antisemitism, followed by imprisonment in the Lviv Ghetto and Nazi concentration camps [3]. In science, he gained recognition [4] but not the fame that he had every right to expect: this was denied him during his lifetime and after his death. Ludwik Fleck was an exceptionally broad-minded individual and a true scholar. He gained recognition for his achievements in research on the anti-typhoid vaccine and for the discovery of leukergy, the clumping of white blood cells that accompanies some inflammations and infections [5-13]. Fleck’s unique theory of thought-styles in the field of philosophy of medicine remained almost completely unnoticed until several years after his death at the end of the 1970s, when it was finally acknowledged by the western scientific community. In the next decade, the concept of thought-styles gained a permanent position in the world of science. Today, it inspires many researchers in the fields of the history of science [14] and the history of medicine [15], as well as people involved in various medical specialties [16,17]. Fleck’s concept explains the mechanisms of the evolution of scientific knowledge, especially medical knowledge. He was the last representative of the Polish school of Philosophy of Medicine [18,19]. Looking back over Ludwik Fleck’s career as a scientist, a doctor and a philosopher, two questions emerge: Is Fleck’s concept of thoughtstyles useful for contemporary physicians? Does contemporary medicine need Fleck’s theory of thought-styles?