During her lifetime, Adrienne von Speyr had planned to write a book on the ethos of the medical doctor. In 1983, Hans Urs von Balthasar chose from among her scattered notes those that reflected her fundamental intuitions on the topic. Out of these he wove together the present work. As Balthasar writes in his foreword, the texts gathered here “circle around three foci: the initiation of the medical student into the basic attitude befitting a doctor, the doctor’s human relation to his patient, and the question of truth in medicine. These are the questions that would have been at the center of the book the author herself was unable to complete.”