Evidence Based Medicine and Psychiatry has had a (controversial) success in the last years. Narrative Based Medicine and Psychiatry has emerged subsequently as a complementary (not an alternative) movement. The object of this presentation is the following question: To what extent are these movements something new for medical science? Or, to what extent are they simply the current expression of an age-old tradition in the history of medicine and psychiatry? Our objective here is to review a series of possible (and scantily commented) historical antecedents, not so much of Evidence- and Narrative- Based Medicine and Psychiatry in themselves, as of the scientific aspirations and the human needs that are behind them.

This paper is included in the Research Project Ref. HUM2005-02105/FISO, Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Ministry of Education and Science), Madrid, Spain.