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Medicine ⸤◻️⸥｜Definition｜1st｜20260115181459-00-⌔
Medicine
Medicine is the science1 and practice2 of caring for patients, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment and palliation of their injury or disease, while promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices which evolved to maintain and restore health through the prevention and treatment of illness and infection. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through various pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies such as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others.3
Medicine has been practiced since prehistoric times, and for most of this time it was an art (an area of creativity and skill), 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, or the four humors. 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). For example, while stitching technique for sutures is an art learned through practice, knowledge of what happens at the cellular and molecular level in the tissues being stitched arises through science.
Prescientific forms of medicine, now known as traditional medicine or folk medicine, remain commonly used in the absence of scientific medicine and are thus called alternative medicine. Alternative treatments outside of scientific medicine with ethical, safety and efficacy concerns are termed quackery or being based on fringe science.4
Printed 2026-06-28.
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Link to original Footnotes
Firth J (2020). “Science in medicine: when, how, and what”. Oxford textbook of medicine. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-874669-0. ↩
Saunders J (June 2000). “The practice of clinical medicine as an art and as a science”. Med Humanit. 26 (1): 18–22. doi:10.1136/mh.26.1.18. ISSN 1468-215X. PMC 1071282. PMID 12484313. S2CID 73306806. ↩
“Dictionary, medicine”. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 2 December 2013. ↩
Bell D (1 December 1999). “Secret science”. Science and Public Policy. 26 (6): 450–450. doi:10.1093/spp/26.6.450. ISSN 0302-3427. ↩
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