Fatwa no. 19701 I am a student in the Faculty of Medicine. The curriculum involves a theoretical section and a practical one. As for the practical section, the students (Part No. 24; Page No. 413) make visits to the patients in some hospitals, and this involves two matters:First, the students start gathering all the information about the patient's case, his complaints, and the symptoms of his disease as said by the patient himself, or what is medically called, "The history of the disease."Second: examining the patient by the student, given that this examination is no more than a part of the student's training, and has absolutely nothing to do with treating the patient who has a specializing doctor responsible for his medical treatment.However, there are some matters that we are not sure about:Firstly, is it permissible for a male student to study a case from the gynecology section in the way mentioned above, bearing in mind that there are already similar medical cases in the men's section?Secondly, if the disease is common in men and women, but the infected cases are only in the gynecology section, does it become permissible to examine a female patient in this case? It should be noted that there is no certainty whether there will be another similar cases in the men's section in the future or not.Thirdly, there are certain diseases that only women are infected with; is it permissible for a male student in this case to examine the female patient himself, or just let her go with the period of the disease as well as the symptoms she feels? Or are both impermissible?Since this matter has become unavoidable in the faculties of Medicine, (Part No. 24; Page No. 414) and many students feel uneasy towards it, we hope that Your Eminence will clarify the issue for us.