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Medicine is the science and practice of establishing the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others.
Medicine has been practiced since prehistoric times, during most of which it was an art (an area of skill and knowledge) frequently having connections to the religious and philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a medicine man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, or an ancient philosopher and physician would apply bloodletting according to the theories of humorism. In recent centuries, since the advent of modern science, most medicine has become a combination of art and science (both basic and applied, under the umbrella of medical science). While stitching technique for sutures is an art learned through practice, the knowledge of what happens at the cellular and molecular level in the tissues being stitched arises through science.
Prescientific forms of medicine are now known as traditional medicine and folk medicine. They remain commonly used with, or instead of, scientific medicine and are thus called alternative medicine. As an example, evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture is "variable and inconsistent" for any condition, but is generally safe when done by an appropriately trained practitioner. In contrast, alternative treatments outside the bounds not just of scientific medicine, but also outside the bounds of safety and efficacy are termed quackery. This can encompass an array of practices and practitioners, irrespective of whether they are prescientific (traditional medicine and folk medicine) or modern pseudo-scientific, including chiropractic which rejects modern scientific germ theory of disease (instead believing without evidence that human diseases are caused by invisible subluxation of the bones, predominantly of the spine and less so of other bones), with just over half of chiropractors also rejecting the science of immunization. Read more...
Selected article –
Metformin (INN; trade names Glucophage, Diabex, Diaformin, Fortamet, Riomet, Glumetza and others) is an anti-diabetic drug from the biguanide class of oral antihyperglycemic agents. Other biguanides include the withdrawn agents phenformin and buformin. Metformin is the most popular anti-diabetic drug in the United States and one of the most prescribed drugs overall, with nearly 35 million prescriptions filled in 2006 for generic metformin alone. The biguanide class of anti-diabetic drugs originates from the French lilac (Galega officinalis), a plant known for several centuries to reduce the symptoms of diabetes mellitus. (More...)
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Photo credit: Irja from San Francisco (cc-by-sa-2.0)
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- ... vinca alkaloids are chemotherapy drugs that inhibit the polymerization of tubulin, whereas taxanes are produced by plants of the genus Taxus that inhibit tubulin depolymerization?
- ... that Sydenham's chorea (or St. Vitus' dance) is one of the major criteria in the Jones diagnostic criteria for rheumatic fever?
- ... that rare mistargetting of somatic hypermutation is being investigated as a mechanism in the development of B-cell lymphomas?
General images –
The Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, gained international prominence as a centre for moral treatment and a model of asylum reform following the publication of Samuel Tuke's Description of the Retreat (1813).
Assorted dried plant and animal parts used in traditional Chinese medicines, clockwise from top left corner: dried Lingzhi (lit. "spirit mushrooms"), ginseng, Luo Han Guo, turtle shell underbelly (plastron), and dried curled snakes
Sometimes traditional medicines include parts of endangered species, such as the slow loris in Southeast Asia.
The oldest Polish Collegium Medicum at Jagiellonian University founded in 1364
Most countries have seen a tremendous increase in life expectancy since 1945. However, in southern Africa, the HIV epidemic beginning around 1990 has eroded national health.
"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale.
Andreas Vesalius's 1543 De humani corporis fabrica contained intricately detailed drawings of human dissections, often in allegorical poses.
Florence Nightingale triggered the professionalization of nursing. Photograph c. 1860
Replica of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope of the 1670s
Botánicas such as this one in Jamaica Plain, Boston, cater to the Latino community and sell folk medicine alongside statues of saints, candles decorated with prayers, lucky bamboo, and other items.
18th-century medical remedies collected by a British Gentry family
Depiction of smallpox in Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún's history of the conquest of Mexico, Book XII of the Florentine Codex, from the defeated Aztecs' point of view
Medical recipe concerning poisoning. Terracotta tablet, from Nippur, Iraq, 18th century BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul
Traditional medicine in a market in Antananarivo, Madagascar
Smallpox vaccination in Niger, 1969. A decade later, this was the first infectious disease to be eradicated.
Ayurvedic herbal medicines
American Civil War hospital at Gettysburg, 1863
The Hippocratic Corpus
A collection of early medical works may be associated with Hippocrates
A cochlear implant is a common kind of neural prosthesis, a device replacing part of the human nervous system.
Curandera performing a limpieza in Cuenca, Ecuador
Guy's Hospital in 1820
Mandrake (written 'ΜΑΝΔΡΑΓΟΡΑ' in Greek capitals). Naples Dioscurides, 7th century
Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, c. 1850–58. The asylum population in England and Wales rose from 1,027 in 1827 to 74,004 in 1900.
Mexico City epidemic of 1737, with elites calling on the Virgin of Guadalupe
The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, written in the 17th century BC, contains the earliest recorded reference to the brain. New York Academy of Medicine.
Louis Pasteur experimenting on bacteria, c. 1870
American combat surgery during the Pacific War, 1943. Major wars showed the need for effective hygiene and medical treatment.
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