[History of health care: from Jean-Jacque Rousseau to the Genetic Enhancement Project]

The present paper is intended to analyse the history of structural changes in the concept of health since the Enlightenment era. It will outline that health can be understood as a paradisiacal state of nature (Rousseau), as the result of the application of medical procedures and repair techniques (scientific medicine of the 19th and 20th century) or as a dissolving borderline concept (genetic enhancement techniques). The aim of medicine, i.e. health, must therefore be seen as a historically changeable concept. Given these changes in our understanding of health, ethical questions arise as to which concept of health ought to guide future medical practice.