Paradoxes of Medical Progress: Abandoned Patients, Physicians, and Nurses

Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, Austrian author and actor (1801–1862), said of progress that it appears to be much greater that it really is. This is not only because no one wants to contradict the promise that the term itself implies— advancing toward improvement. Above all, it concerns the fact that every advance of a certain dimension is accompanied by undesired collateral results, which in extreme cases can invalidate the benefit of the progress.