The doctor-patient relationship is a fundamental characteristic of the practice and provision of quality healthcare. The relationship reflects the principles of modern medicine and is central when it comes to consensual practice. Today's expected relationship implies a sense of equality between doctor and patient; including the patient's sense of autonomy. However, this was not always the case. Armstrong describes the patient as “an identity created by doctors,” showing how the relationship was once viewed, and introduces the idea of ​​nonconsensual practice. Previously, doctors had shared the paternalistic view that “the doctor knows best.” However, as time has passed, this view has changed to one that patients have choice in their healthcare. This essay will look at different periods in history where non-consensual practice took place and how, through many different developments, it is now seen as the non-professional practice seen today. During the 18th and 19th centuries the face of medicine changed radically. There has been a shift in the medical world from the previously reliable bedside medicine to hospital medicine to laboratory medicine. Bedside Medicine was the original mode of production, and all this time, disease was defined as external signs rather than internal causes. For this reason, medical investigators looked into the primary cause of the disease and tried to find a common cure for all of them. During this era of medicine, the poor could not afford to hire attending physicians, and thus consumers of medical care were the sick portion of the upper class who paid at private rates. And it was this group of sick people who had all the control over the medical investigators. T...... half of the document ...... and the implications this had on their operations. Non-consensual practices would be completely unacceptable nowadays. Originally the Nuremberg Code was intended to secure the idea of ​​consensual practice, but Pappworth refuted this belief and it was only with the introduction of HSMs, among other factors, that the idea of ​​non-consensual practice was finally rejected. One would like to believe that, in this day and age, trust can be relied upon to stop non-consensual transactions; but realistically it is this patient empowerment, combined with the decline of medical oversight, that explains why non-consensual practice is no longer permitted. The patient is more influential than in the past and the walls between doctors and patients are thinning, meaning that Armstrong's description of the patient as “an identity created by doctors” no longer seems applicable.