An agreed definition provides the basis for an outline of the
characteristics of a professional. Physicians in their day to day
practice function simultaneously as both healers and professionals,
and most definitions include both roles. For teaching purposes, it
is helpful to separate them. This step can be justified, because the
two roles have different histories and have evolved independently,
although in parallel. All societies have required healers who minister
to the sick. The traditions of the healer in the Western world are
derived from Hellenic Greece with the Hippocratic and Aesculapian
traditions. Curing arrived relatively late with the advent of scientific
medicine.