To summarize these ideas that all center around time and variations, we might think of the
genes as
constituting a biological memory that serves at once to connect individuals with other people and with the past. The
genes also provide a plan to
construct and maintain an individual homeostatic memory that
mediates experiences in the context of an ontogenetic memory that preserves individuality through time and change to set on health and disease a personal stamp. It is the mission of medicine to understand the individuality of these memories and of the elements that constitute them, and where, necessary, to adjust the environment to homeostatic limitation. It is my hope that this account of this often colorful but hapless and stricken family might give substance to these thoughts.