The article examines the genesis of the medical education model proposed by A. Flexner in the United States and compares it with Antonio da Silva Mello's 1930s proposal to apply the German university model to Brazilian medical teaching. The heart of these medical reforms - which sought to introduce the teaching of biomedicine and to boost the esteem of the scientific career-did not depend solely on these two reformers' perfect understanding of the bases of the new model. Each rhetoric expressed a political arrangement wherein any expectations for change in the consolidated educational system depended upon its power structure and upon traditional career expectations.
medical education; history; history of medicine; Flexner reform; scientific culture