Medicine is the applied science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness in human beings.
Contemporary medicine applies health science, biomedical research, and medical technology to diagnose and treat injury and disease, typically through medication or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints & traction, prostheses, biologics, ionizing radiation and others.
The word medicine is derived from the Latin ars medicina, meaning the art of healing.
Read more about Medicine: History, Clinical Practice, Institutions, Branches, Education, Medical Ethics, Legal Controls, Criticism of Modern Medicine, Honors and Awards, Patron Saints
Famous quotes containing the word medicine:
“For this invention of yours will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn it, by causing them to neglect their memory, inasmuch as, from their confidence in writing, they will recollect by the external aid of foreign symbols, and not by the internal use of their own faculties. Your discovery, therefore, is a medicine not for memory, but for recollection,—for recalling to, not for keeping in mind.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Good medicine is bitter, but it cures illness.”
—Chinese proverb.
Confucius.
“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)