Education for medicine is profoundly influenced by medical practice, science, cultural, and social circumstances. Throughout the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, physicians were educated formally in the university classroom or informally throug private study. An innovation in medical education with lasting consequences took place in western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As a result of the rise of universities, medicine was taught in a university setting. The content of the discipline taught by medical faculties of the medieval and Renaissance universities included logic, natural philosophy, and skills acquired by apprenticeship. The university curricula transmitted a body of medical concepts and techniques for medical practice. The expansion of science and related knowledge made a great impact on medical education in the seventeenth century. Content and concepts from medicine-related science began to be included in the medical curriculum in universities. Teaching clinics were established in the early eighteenth century. Innovative experiments were performed in teaching and research hospitals during the late eighteenth century. Students were placed in charge of wards, caring for patients and keeping medical records. During the early nineteenth century, the hospital moved toward the center of medical education and research. Hospital-based medical education contributed greatly to the development of appropriate diagnostic techniques and the numerical approach to disease and therapeutics. Science was incorporated into clinical concepts and clinical practice from the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Science courses were added to the student's total educational experience. The apprenticeship was rapidly disappearing by mid-century and medical students were based wholly at the school. Enhanced value was placed on the basic scientific training of medical students by the end of the nineteenth century. The purpose of science teaching was to provide students with the skills and knowledge to equip them with the basis for practicing the best medicine. Medical advances in the twentieth century have created ethical dilemmas. Knowledge, kills, and a certain humane and wise attitude towards the patient are regarded as the three main characteristics of a good doctor.The importance of the humanities in developing appropriate attitudes of medical students has been stressed in an age of science. Courses in the humanities have bern increasingly included as part of the curriculum in medical education. The need to humanize physicians in an increasingly technological age has become a concern of educators by this latter part of the twentieth century.