[Medical theories, doctrines and schools, an outline of the problem]

The author presents her own proposals for defining such notions as medical theory, medical doctrine and school of medicine. She discusses the extent to which it is possible to make use, in studies on medical theories, of the conception of ideals of science, research programmes and the relativistic conception of scientific fact developed by L. Fleck. She presents proposals for a model of medical doctrine, consisting of three levels: the constitutive, the nomothetic and the variational. She also adduces a proposal for research on the reception of the views of schools of medicine using the conception of the strategies of action of scientific communities. The article is a recapitulation of the author's research conducted in the years 1988-1997.