In the Western world the autopsy rate is declining at an alarming rate. In the United States of America the rate in some academic hospitals is less than 7% of all hospital deaths. This decline has been documented and deplored in many countries, articles and books. Suggestions on how to resuscitate the autopsy range from mandatory in all hospital deaths to economic bonuses to the doctors obtaining the highest autopsy rate. All in vain, the autopsy decline continues. Pathologists deploring this decline blamed clinical colleagues, new social attitudes, the litigious nature of modern society, but few have questioned a procedure little changed in more than a century. Perhaps the time has come to abandon the "classic" autopsy and rethink the procedure so as to make it useful, alluring and indispensable for the contemporary, concerned clinician. (Rev Med Chile 2000; 128: 457-59)