Papers presented at a symposium on philosophy and medicine at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1974 were published in the inaugural volume of this series. To help celebrate more than 20 years of extraordinary success with the series, another symposium was convened in Galveston in 1995. The convenors asked the participants these questions: In what ways and to what ends have academic humanists and medical scientists and practitioners become serious conversation partners in recent years? How have their dialogues been shaped by prevailing social views, political philosophies, academic habits, professional mores, and public pressures? What have been the key concepts and questions of these dialogues? Have the dialogues made any appreciable intellectual or social difference? Have they improved the care of the sick? Authors respond from a variety of theoretical perspectives in the humanities. They also articulate conceptions of philosophy of medicine and bioethics from various practice experiences, and bring critical attention to aspects of the contemporary health policy.

History and Theory.- Bioethics as an Interdisciplinary Enterprise: Where Does Ethics Fit in the Mosaic of Disciplines?.- Humanities in the Service of Medicine: Three Models.- The Primacy of Practice: Medicine and Postmodernism.- What can the Epistemologists Learn from the Endocrinologists? Or is the Philosophy of Medicine Based on a Mistake?.- Praxis as a Keystone for the Philosophy and Professional Ethics of Medicine: The Need for an Arch-Support: Commentary on Toulmin and Wartofsky.- Bioethics and the Philosophy of Medicine Reconsidered.- Form Synthesis and System to Morals and Procedure: The Development of Philosophy of Medicine.- The Philosophy of Medicine and Bioethics: Commentary on Ten Have and Engelhardt.- Practice and Theory.- Bioethics in Social Context.- The Week of November Seventh: Bioethics as a Practice.- Toward A Humanist Bioethics: Commentary on Churchill and Andre.- Medical Ethics as Reflective Practice.- From Principles to Reflective Practice or Narrative Ethics? Commentary on Carson.- Hedgehogs and Hermaphrodites: Toward a More Anthropological Bioethics.- An Anthropological Bioethics: Hermeneutical or Critical? Commentary on Elliott.- Medicine's Challenge to Relativism: The Case of Female Genital Mutilation.- "We be of One Blood, You and I": Commentary on Kopelman.- Must Patients Suffer?.- Doctors and Their Suffering Patients: Commentary on Campbell.- Policy.- Whatever Happened to Research Ethics?.- What's Happening in Reserach Ethics? Commentary on Brody.- At the Intersection of Medicine, Law, Economics, and Ethics: Bioethics and the Art of Intellectual Cross-Dressing.- Intellectual Cross-Dressing: An Eccentricity or A practical Necessity? Commentary on Morreim.