This article deals with the implications of cultural anthropological interpretative epistemology and methodology for a biomedical model of treatment, comparing clinical practice with ethnographic fieldwork, and the doctor with the cultural anthropologist. It indicates the advantages of including the subjectivity of the patient and the patient’s personal stories regarding the experience of the illness in the healing process. This is achieved through focusing the biomedical practices on the patient, whereby in the conversation with the patient the doctor writes an "ethnography" or narrative of the illness. Finally, the article asks the question of whether bureaucratisation and the demand for an economy of time prevents the development of such practices.