[The medical visit and clinical teaching: past and present]

Clinical teaching at the bedside began in the 1600s, finding full expression by 1754 in Van Swieten's Vienna School of Medicine. In Italy it originated in the sixteenth century with G.B. Montano and was developed in the nineteenth & twentieth century by Baccelli, Murri, Concato and others. The practice of complete clinical examination rose from the discovery of methods like auscultation and percussion and gained currency by the nineteenth century. Today, clinical examination and teaching are faced with a crisis that oblige us to ponder over both, to find new solutions and to preserve what's best in the achievements of the past.