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Medicine

Adapted from Wikipedia · Discoverer experience

A thoughtful doctor observes a sick girl in the 19th century, surrounded by worried family members, highlighting the care and concern of medical professionals during challenging times.

Medicine is the science and practice of caring for patients. It helps people when they are sick or hurt by finding out what is wrong, deciding what might happen, and finding ways to make them better. Doctors and nurses use many different methods to help people stay healthy, including giving medicines, doing surgeries, and using special machines or tools.

The Doctor by Sir Luke Fildes (1891)

People have been trying to heal others for a very long time, even before we had modern science. In the past, healing often mixed creativity, skill, and beliefs from religion or philosophy. For example, some cultures had special people called medicine men who used herbs and prayers to help others feel better.

Today, medicine is both an art and a science. Skills like stitching a wound need practice and creativity, while understanding what happens inside the body at the cellular and molecular level comes from scientific research. Even though some older ways of healing are still used, most modern medicine relies on careful study and proven methods to safely help people stay healthy.

Etymology

Medicine is the science and practice of finding out what is wrong with someone, guessing what might happen next, and helping to make people better or stay healthy. The word "medicine" comes from a Latin word meaning "a physician", which is a doctor who helps people with their health. Another old word for medicine was "physic", which also led to the word "physician".

Clinical practice

Medical care and how doctors work differ around the world because of differences in culture and technology. In places like Western world, modern medicine is very advanced. But in some areas with fewer resources, such as parts of Africa, the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, people often use traditional medicine.

Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female physician in the United States graduated from SUNY Upstate (1847)

In the developed world, doctors try to use the best research when treating patients. But sometimes, they might use treatments that are not fully proven. Doctors must always try to help patients and not cause harm.

When a doctor sees a patient, they first talk about the patient's health history and medical record. They also do a physical examination using tools like a stethoscope. The doctor might ask about the patient's family, jobs, hobbies, and habits like diet or tobacco. After this, the doctor might order medical tests like blood tests or prescribe pharmaceutical drugs. The doctor will then decide on the best way to help the patient, which could include more tests, treatments, or watching and waiting. Follow-up visits help check on the patient's progress.

Institutions

Contemporary medicine is usually provided within health care systems. Governments and sometimes international groups set up rules, certifications, and ways to pay for health care. These rules shape how doctors and hospitals give care to people.

The Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, fresco by Domenico di Bartolo, 1441–1442

From ancient times, groups like the Catholic Church helped start hospitals and nursing care. Today, many countries offer universal health care so everyone can get medical help when they need it, no matter their money. This can be done through a single-payer health care system or private insurance. In some places, only those who can pay get care.

Health care is given by many types of workers, such as medics, nurses, physiotherapists, and psychologists. They all follow their own rules and have special training.

Medical care is split into three main types. Primary care is the first step, given by doctors or other health workers in clinics, schools, or homes. It helps with everyday health issues and prevents sickness. Secondary care is for more complex problems and is given by specialists in hospitals or clinics. Tertiary care is for very serious conditions and uses special equipment and teams of experts found in big hospitals.

Branches

Working together as an interdisciplinary team, many highly trained health professionals besides medical practitioners are involved in the delivery of modern health care. Examples include: nurses, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, laboratory scientists, pharmacists, podiatrists, physiotherapists, respiratory therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, radiographers, dietitians, and bioengineers, medical physicists, surgeons, surgeon's assistant, surgical technologist.

The scope and sciences underpinning human medicine overlap many other fields. A patient admitted to the hospital is usually under the care of a specific team based on their main presenting problem, e.g., the cardiology team, who then may interact with other specialties, e.g., surgical, radiology, to help diagnose or treat the main problem or any subsequent complications/developments.

Physicians have many specializations and sub specializations into certain branches of medicine, which are listed below. There are variations from country to country regarding which specialties certain subspecialties are in.

The main branches of medicine are:

Basic sciences

Drawing by Marguerite Martyn (1918) of a visiting nurse in St. Louis, Missouri, with medicine and babies

Specialties

Main article: Medical specialty

In the broadest meaning of "medicine", there are many different specialties. In the UK, most specialities have their own body or college, which has its own entrance examination. These are collectively known as the Royal Colleges, although not all currently use the term "Royal". The development of a speciality is often driven by new technology (such as the development of effective anaesthetics) or ways of working (such as emergency departments); the new specialty leads to the formation of a unifying body of doctors and the prestige of administering their own examination.

Within medical circles, specialities usually fit into one of two broad categories: "Medicine" and "Surgery". "Medicine" refers to the practice of non-operative medicine, and most of its subspecialties require preliminary training in Internal Medicine. In the UK, this was traditionally evidenced by passing the examination for the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) or the equivalent college in Scotland or Ireland. "Surgery" refers to the practice of operative medicine, and most subspecialties in this area require preliminary training in General Surgery, which in the UK leads to membership of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (MRCS). At present, some specialties of medicine do not fit easily into either of these categories, such as radiology, pathology, or anesthesia. Most of these have branched from one or other of the two camps above; for example anaesthesia developed first as a faculty of the Royal College of Surgeons (for which MRCS/FRCS would have been required) before becoming the Royal College of Anaesthetists and membership of the college is attained by sitting for the examination of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Anesthetists (FRCA).

Surgical specialty

Louis Pasteur, as portrayed in his laboratory, 1885 by Albert Edelfelt

Main article: Surgery

Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance or to repair unwanted ruptured areas (for example, a perforated ear drum). Surgeons must also manage pre-operative, post-operative, and potential surgical candidates on the hospital wards. In some centers, anesthesiology is part of the division of surgery (for historical and logistical reasons), although it is not a surgical discipline. Other medical specialties may employ surgical procedures, such as ophthalmology and dermatology, but are not considered surgical sub-specialties per se.

Surgical training in the U.S. requires a minimum of five years of residency after medical school. Sub-specialties of surgery often require seven or more years. In addition, fellowships can last an additional one to three years. Because post-residency fellowships can be competitive, many trainees devote two additional years to research. Thus in some cases surgical training will not finish until more than a decade after medical school. Furthermore, surgical training can be very difficult and time-consuming.

Surgical subspecialties include those a physician may specialize in after undergoing general surgery residency training as well as several surgical fields with separate residency training. Surgical subspecialties that one may pursue following general surgery residency training:

Other surgical specialties within medicine with their own individual residency training:

Statue of Robert Koch in Berlin

Internal medicine specialty

Main article: Internal medicine

Internal medicine is the medical specialty dealing with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of adult diseases. According to some sources, an emphasis on internal structures is implied. In North America, specialists in internal medicine are commonly called "internists". Elsewhere, especially in Commonwealth nations, such specialists are often called physicians. These terms, internist or physician (in the narrow sense, common outside North America), generally exclude practitioners of gynecology and obstetrics, pathology, psychiatry, and especially surgery and its subspecialities.

Because their patients are often seriously ill or require complex investigations, internists do much of their work in hospitals. Formerly, many internists were not subspecialized; such general physicians would see any complex nonsurgical problem; this style of practice has become much less common. In modern urban practice, most internists are subspecialists: that is, they generally limit their medical practice to problems of one organ system or to one particular area of medical knowledge. For example, gastroenterologists and nephrologists specialize respectively in diseases of the gut and the kidneys.

In the Commonwealth of Nations and some other countries, specialist pediatricians and geriatricians are also described as specialist physicians (or internists) who have subspecialized by age of patient rather than by organ system. Elsewhere, especially in North America, general pediatrics is often a form of primary care.

There are many subspecialities (or subdisciplines) of internal medicine:

Training in internal medicine (as opposed to surgical training), varies considerably across the world: see the articles on medical education for more details. In North America, it requires at least three years of residency training after medical school, which can then be followed by a one- to three-year fellowship in the subspecialties listed above. In general, resident work hours in medicine are less than those in surgery, averaging about 60 hours per week in the US. This difference does not apply in the UK where all doctors are now required by law to work less than 48 hours per week on average.

Diagnostic specialties

Other major specialties

The following are some major medical specialties that do not directly fit into any of the above-mentioned groups:

  • Anesthesiology (also known as anaesthetics): concerned with the perioperative management of the surgical patient. The anesthesiologist's role during surgery is to prevent derangement in the vital organs' (i.e. brain, heart, kidneys) functions and postoperative pain. Outside of the operating room, the anesthesiology physician also serves the same function in the labor and delivery ward, and some are specialized in critical medicine.

  • Emergency medicine is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of acute or life-threatening conditions, including trauma, surgical, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric emergencies.

  • Family medicine, family practice, general practice or primary care is, in many countries, the first port-of-call for patients with non-emergency medical problems. Family physicians often provide services across a broad range of settings including office based practices, emergency department coverage, inpatient care, and nursing home care.

  • Medical genetics is concerned with the diagnosis and management of hereditary disorders.

  • Neurology is concerned with diseases of the nervous system. In the UK, neurology is a subspecialty of general medicine.

  • Obstetrics and gynecology (often abbreviated as OB/GYN (American English) or Obs & Gynae (British English)) are concerned respectively with childbirth and the female reproductive and associated organs. Reproductive medicine and fertility medicine are generally practiced by gynecological specialists.

  • Pediatrics (AE) or paediatrics (BE) is devoted to the care of infants, children, and adolescents. Like internal medicine, there are many pediatric subspecialties for specific age ranges, organ systems, disease classes, and sites of care delivery.

  • Pharmaceutical medicine is the medical scientific discipline concerned with the discovery, development, evaluation, registration, monitoring and medical aspects of marketing of medicines for the benefit of patients and public health.

  • Physical medicine and rehabilitation (or physiatry) is concerned with functional improvement after injury, illness, or congenital disorders.

  • Podiatric medicine is the study of, diagnosis, and medical and surgical treatment of disorders of the foot, ankle, lower limb, hip and lower back.

  • Preventive medicine is the branch of medicine concerned with preventing disease.

  • Psychiatry is the branch of medicine concerned with the bio-psycho-social study of the etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of cognitive, perceptual, emotional and behavioral disorders. Related fields include psychotherapy and clinical psychology.

Interdisciplinary fields

Some interdisciplinary sub-specialties of medicine include:

  • Addiction medicine deals with the treatment of addiction.
  • Aerospace medicine deals with medical problems related to flying and space travel.
  • Biomedical Engineering is a field dealing with the application of engineering principles to medical practice.
  • Clinical pharmacology is concerned with how systems of therapetics interact with patients.
  • Conservation medicine studies the relationship between human and non-human animal health, and environmental conditions. Also known as ecological medicine, environmental medicine, or medical geology.
  • Disaster medicine deals with medical aspects of emergency preparedness, disaster mitigation and management.
  • Diving medicine (or hyperbaric medicine) is the prevention and treatment of diving-related problems.
  • Evolutionary medicine is a perspective on medicine derived through applying evolutionary theory.
  • Forensic medicine deals with medical questions in legal context, such as determination of the time and cause of death, type of weapon used to inflict trauma, reconstruction of the facial features using remains of deceased (skull) thus aiding identification.
  • Gender-based medicine studies the biological and physiological differences between the human sexes and how that affects differences in disease.
  • Health informatics is a relatively recent field that deal with the application of computers and information technology to medicine.
  • Hospice and Palliative Medicine is a relatively modern branch of clinical medicine that deals with pain and symptom relief and emotional support in patients with terminal illnesses including cancer and heart failure.
  • Hospital medicine is the general medical care of hospitalized patients. Physicians whose primary professional focus is hospital medicine are called hospitalists in the United States and Canada. The term Most Responsible Physician (MRP) or attending physician is also used interchangeably to describe this role.
  • Laser medicine involves the use of lasers in the diagnostics or treatment of various conditions.
  • Many other health science fields, e.g. dietetics
  • Medical ethics deals with ethical and moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine.
  • Medical humanities includes the humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts) and their application to medical education and practice.
  • Nosokinetics is the science/subject of measuring and modelling the process of care in health and social care systems.
  • Nosology is the classification of diseases for various purposes.
  • Occupational medicine is the provision of health advice to organizations and individuals to ensure that the highest standards of health and safety at work can be achieved and maintained.
  • Pain management (also called pain medicine, or algiatry) is the medical discipline concerned with the relief of pain.
  • Pharmacogenomics is a form of individualized medicine.
  • Podiatric medicine is the study of, diagnosis, and medical treatment of disorders of the foot, ankle, lower limb, hip and lower back.
  • Sexual medicine is concerned with diagnosing, assessing and treating all disorders related to sexuality.
  • Sports medicine deals with the treatment and prevention and rehabilitation of sports/exercise injuries such as muscle spasms, muscle tears, injuries to ligaments (ligament tears or ruptures) and their repair in athletes, amateur and professional.
  • Therapeutics is the field, more commonly referenced in earlier periods of history, of the various remedies that can be used to treat disease and promote health.
  • Travel medicine or emporiatrics deals with health problems of international travelers or travelers across highly different environments.
  • Tropical medicine deals with the prevention and treatment of tropical diseases. It is studied separately in temperate climates where those diseases are quite unfamiliar to medical practitioners and their local clinical needs.
  • Urgent care focuses on delivery of unscheduled, walk-in care outside of the hospital emergency department for injuries and illnesses that are not severe enough to require care in an emergency department. In some jurisdictions this function is combined with the emergency department.
  • Veterinary medicine; veterinarians apply similar techniques as physicians to the care of non-human animals.
  • Wilderness medicine entails the practice of medicine in the wild, where conventional medical facilities may not be available.

Education and legal controls

Main articles: Medical education and Medical license

Medical students learning about stitches

Learning to be a doctor is different in each country, but it usually starts with studying at a university medical school. After that, doctors practice under supervision, sometimes called an internship or residency, before moving on to more specialized training. Doctors keep learning throughout their careers because medicine changes so quickly. They read journals, attend seminars, and take part in online programs to stay updated.

In most places, doctors must have a license to practice. This means they need to finish their studies and pass exams set by medical boards. These rules help make sure patients get good care and protect them from people who might not give proper medical help. Even though laws usually focus on certain types of medicine, they aim to support all ways of caring for health. If a doctor is careless or causes harm, they might face serious consequences.

Medical ethics

Main article: Medical ethics

A 12th-century Byzantine manuscript of the Hippocratic Oath

Medical ethics are the important rules that help doctors and nurses make good choices when taking care of people. These rules help make sure that everyone is treated fairly and kindly. Some of the key ideas in medical ethics include:

  • Autonomy: This means that patients have the right to choose what treatments they want or don’t want.
  • Beneficence: Doctors should always try to help their patients and do what is best for them.
  • Justice: This is about making sure that everyone gets fair access to healthcare, especially when resources are limited.
  • Non-maleficence: This rule reminds doctors to “first, do no harm,” meaning they should not cause injury or pain to their patients.
  • Respect for persons: Both patients and healthcare workers deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
  • Truthfulness and honesty: Doctors should always be truthful with their patients, especially when asking for their permission to provide certain treatments.

These values help guide difficult decisions in medicine, especially when different ideas clash. Sometimes, there are no perfect answers, and healthcare teams must do their best to balance what is right for everyone involved.

History

Main article: History of medicine

Statuette of ancient Egyptian physician Imhotep, the first physician from antiquity known by name

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of medicine and medical technology.

Medicine has a long history that goes back thousands of years. In ancient times, people used plants, animal parts, and minerals to help with health problems. They often had special rituals and beliefs about healing, with leaders like priests or shamans guiding the process.

Mosaic on the floor of the Asclepieion of Kos, depicting Hippocrates, with Asklepius in the middle (2nd–3rd century)

Some of the earliest written records about medicine come from places like ancient Syria, Egypt, Babylon, India, China, Greece, and Rome. For example, in Egypt, one of the first doctors we know by name was Imhotep, and they wrote down ways to treat diseases and perform surgeries. In China, early medical texts like the Huangdi Neijing helped shape their approach to medicine. In India, the Sushruta Samhita described surgeries, including early forms of plastic surgery.

In Greece, Hippocrates is often called the "father of modern medicine." He introduced important ideas about how to classify diseases and developed the Hippocratic Oath, which many doctors still follow today. Later, doctors like Galen performed complex surgeries and shared their knowledge with others.

During the Middle Ages, hospitals began to appear as places to care for the sick, not just the dying. In the Muslim world, scholars translated and built upon the works of earlier doctors, making important discoveries. In Europe, the Church helped establish hospitals and schools where medicine was studied.

In more recent times, medicine has advanced greatly with discoveries like vaccines, antibiotics, and better understanding of how the body works. These developments have helped save many lives and improve health around the world.

Quality, efficiency, and access

Modern medical systems focus on using the best evidence to treat patients, preventing mistakes, and avoiding unnecessary treatments. These ideas are very important in countries like the United States, where health care can be very expensive.

How much money countries spend on health care can change what kinds of treatments people can get. In many developed countries, all citizens can receive health care, but in places like the United States, some people may find it hard to afford coverage.

Telemedicine

Main article: Telehealth

Telemedicine, also known as Telehealth, is a way to give healthcare help from far away. It includes checking on patients, giving advice, and treating illnesses without meeting in person. This can be very helpful, especially in places where doctors and nurses are far away or hard to reach.

Some types of telemedicine include:

  • Telenursing: Helping nurses work with patients over long distances.
  • Telepalliative care: Supporting people with serious illnesses to feel better and live more comfortably, using video calls and messages.
  • Telepharmacy: Giving medicine advice and help without a pharmacist being there in person.
  • Telepsychiatry: Offering mental health support through video or phone calls.
  • Telepsychology: Providing counseling and tests for the mind and feelings using technology.
  • Teleneurotherapy: Using computers to help with brain and nerve health.
  • Telenutrition: Giving diet and food advice through video or phone.
  • Telerehabilitation: Helping people recover from injuries or operations using online tools.

Images

A close-up of a drug ampoule, commonly used in medical treatments.
Nurses working at Butuwin Urban Clinic in Papua New Guinea during an official visit.
A healthcare professional working to support women in a clinic in Burkina Faso.
The facade of the Spanish Medical Colleges Organization building in Madrid, Spain.

Related articles

Cytology
Science
Praxis (process)
Patient
Herbs
Prayer

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Medicine, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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