Talk:Medicine/Archive 4

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Rod of Asclepius or Caduceus?

Currently we're saying that the caduceus is the symbol of medicine, but by the content of their respective pages on wikipedia it would seem that the Rod of Asclepius is actually the more historically accurate. Does anyone have any particular views on this? If not I suggest a change. Jbarfield 14:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The strong position is this: anyone who uses the caduceus -- and there are many professional groups (such as, for example, the United States Army Medical Command) that have made this historical and cultural error -- is absolutely and completely incorrect.

Despite from these culturally mistaken recent claims, the caduceus has always been, and will always be a symbol of the Greek God Hermes (also known as the Roman God Mercury), the messenger of the Gods.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with medicine; and, except for these recent, culturally mistaken associations (of, one might suppose, say, speed of delivery of service), there is no evidence of any kind to support any linkage of this symbol of Hermes/Mercury with medicine in any manner at all.

Also, the fact that the American Medical Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, and the British Medical Association, perhaps the three most (historically) eminent medical associations in the world (and, as well, the World Health Organization), all use the Rod of Asclepius in their logo, makes the case for removal unassailable.

To make my point a different way: no matter how many people mistakenly call a Bison bison a "buffalo", the American Bison truly remains a bison; and, in the same way, no matter how many people mistakenly call a Phascolarctos cinereus a "bear", the koala remains a marsupial.

In my view, the caduceus must be replaced (or, at least, removed) immediately! If for no other reason than the fact that its appearance here in Wikipedia will continue to perpetuate (and, inadvertently, support) this historically mistaken attribution.Lindsay658 19:51, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

You are wrong to assume the symbol has nothing to do with medicine. In the old testament Moses made a bronze snake wrapped round a pole: anyone looking up at this symbol was cured of their illness. Without having an old testament to hand I can't give you the exact ref, and it may have only been snakebite that was cured, but it is from here that the west gets the idea of the caduceus being curative. It is likely that Moses (who was highly educated in the Egyptian arts, including medicine) was using an Egyptian idea, and in fact there is some evidence that the snake is a very ancient symbol of mystery, renewal and healing, certainly in Eurasia. Lgh 02:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Lgh, everything you have written in response to my assertion that Hermes/Mercury's "double-snaked" caduceus "has nothing whatsoever to do with medicine" and that, instead, the "single-snaked" Rod of Asclepius is the correct symbol, completely supports my case; and, in fact, what you have written completely explodes any claims that could be made on behalf of the caduceus. Thanks for your supportLindsay658 02:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

yeah OK; the point of this tedious argument is that the symbols are used interchangeably these days and no-one particularly cares about the deep-and-meaningful symbolism. In the seventh centruy CE the caduceus came to be assoc with alchemy, based on the Hermetic spells. The origins of the caduceus are thought to be as early as 2600BCE. It was used by priests in the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece and has been assoc with the Gnostic Corpus Hermeticum and Kundalini Yoga, where it is thought to be symbolic of nerve channels 'ida', 'pingala' and 'sushumna'. Moreover, from a design point of view it is probably preferabl;e to have two snakes. Hermes also originally carried only a staff with a winged sun, according to some sources. This staff may have had two white ribbons which later evolved into the snakes. Also, he was the bringer of health (according to some sources). The snake/s on poles was a widely used symbol throughout the fertile crescent area and symbolised all sorts of things, including sex, renewal and commerce. Lgh 23:03, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Can someone please replace the image to be the correct rod of Aesclepius? For those who "don't care", then it won't matter to you, and you probably shouldn't be posting on Wikipedia if accuracy isn't important to you. To me, the history of medicine is crucial to understanding the profession today; also, a colleague of mine erroneously got a large rod of Caduceus tattoo to celebrate getting his M.D., because he was unaware of the history and a brief search on the internet had led him to websites like this one that has posted the wrong symbol. I'll replace it myself if nobody else does, but I'm not wiki-wise enough yet. Jlefort (talk) 08:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Chiropractors

I reverted an anon's edit on chiropractors and ask you for feedback. It contained unreferenced, and in my opinion, POV statements (such as The body has a powerful, natural, self-healing ability;) NCurse _work 20:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

I think your reversion was entirely appropriate. While chiropractic may be appropriate to include, the anon edit was, as you noted, both POV and unreferenced. -- MarcoTolo 21:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! I had to do an other revertion. Please, those who can, watch the article for some time. NCurse _work 07:45, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Pronunciation

Multiple sources note the di– vs. tri-syllabic pronunciation of medicine—and they tend to ascribe the di-syllabic form to British English. Here are two three I just dug-up:

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1): (med-uh-sin or, especially Brit., med-suhn)

Merriam-Webster: (\'me-d?-s?n, British usually 'med-s?n\ )

Hutchinson Encyclopaedia: "medicine—The standard pronunciation has two syllables [med-suhn], with the stress on the first syllable and a weak second syllable, but there are several acceptable variations including [med-sin] and [med-iss-sin]."

-- MarcoTolo 01:12, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• I think your sources are valid and interesting. Consider putting these within Wiktionary. Djma12 ^(talk) 18:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks. I've taken your suggestion and ported the refs to Wikt (my first actual edits over there). -- MarcoTolo 00:42, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Given all of the above, is there some reason for the absence of any link to the specific area of the Wiktionary to which all of this important information has been removed. It seems that the link should appear where the excised text and footnotes once were (in the first paragraph). I have no idea how to do this. Perhaps someone else could perform this task. Also, why has the reference to the Oxford English Dictionary disappeared? ThanksLindsay658 11:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Per Djma12's comments (both in an edit summary and above), I've listed the pronunciation info at Wiktionary and added a link in the External links section. A direct interwiki link in the first paragraph might also be appropriate - thoughts? -- MarcoTolo 21:57, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this is great. I think a direct interwiki link in the first paragraph would also be helpful. Any suggestions on where to put it so that it is not distracting? Djma12 ^(talk) 22:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Nordic countries still using herbal medicine as a complimentary treatment in clinics

In the following paragraph, there is a flaw:

The new, "scientific" medicine (where results are testable and repeatable) replaced early Western traditions of medicine, based on herbalism, the Greek "four humours" and other pre-modern theories.

In the Nordic countries, herbal medicine is used as a complimentary measure with the chemical drugs in clinics. It is used to treat less harmful complaints as digestion problems, ... By using herbal medicine, it allows the clinics to treat the patient without any side-effects, in contradiction to what happens if they give chemical drugs.

No side effects? Nature rarely gives anything away for free. A herb will either have no side effects becuase it does nothing or it might do something but the side effects are unknown. Where do you think many of the chemicals used in evidence based medicine come from in the first place? --Meridius 03:04, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Doctor vs Physician

A search in this article for 'doctor' yields just 3 matches. This really proves the US-centric nature of the article. In countries outside the US, 'physicians' are called 'doctors' - and 'medical doctor/MD' is not really used. Indeed, physicians are a particular specialty of doctor. I think this needs to be either clarified, or fixed up. Suicup 04:47, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Anyone want to take a gander at this? It's beyond the scope of my studies.... --Mrtobacco 03:48, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Avicenna

I have added Avicenna as he was considered the modern father of medicine 78.144.25.252 16:59, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Patient-physician-relationship

The four cornerstones of medicine described in the article are anatomy, physiology, pathology and psychology. Should psychology be changed to psychiatry instead? - Cyborg Ninja 15:39, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Development of Individual Medicines

What is the scientific name for the skill/career or developing new medicines. For example crocodillin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.111.37.82 (talk) 16:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Pharmaceutical medicine. JFW | T@lk 05:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Fishy paragraph in "History of medicine"

I FACT marked two assestations in this paragraph which I find particularly problematic. But there are several serious problems in the entire paragraph: The link to UK actually directs to Germany (bogus or vandalism?). The temporal flow is incoherent, starts with 1900s and then the black death... The authority discussion seems misplaced, I would rather see it as a shift towards empiricism but this originated earlier, at least in the 1700 century, see John Locke and David Hume. I understand the logic of the reference to planetary movement - but the reference causes the line of reasoning to wander. The Church was a very conservative power, but not only the Catholic, also the Protestant. The narrow focus on UK/USA is contradicted in the preceeding section where many countries are mentioned. I suggest the whole paragraph be deleted. Power.corrupts (talk) 11:16, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you try boldy rewriting it, rather than others needing to do the tidying up? JFW | T@lk 20:24, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not asking other people to do work. I propose that the paragraph is deleted, not rewritten. The text has been like this for at least two years. As a mere passerby I consider it reasonable to present arguments and defer the decision to the the people regularly reviewing this page. But I would be happy to contribute. Power.corrupts (talk) 10:37, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Science: monkeys were the first doctors

[1] May be big news for this article? Should we make a mention about animal using medicine? --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.84.85.22 (talk) 13:07, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Most people would disagree with your statement because most christians believe that god made first creatures. And most scientists believe that we evolved from monkeys. So the scientists would be on your side for that one. Faln angel82 (talk) 20:53, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Chiropractic Medicine: inclusion worthy?

I noticed that naturopathic medicine was in this article, and was wondering the feelings of including chiropractic medicine, in some form, in the body of the article. Thoughts? CorticoSpinal (talk) 19:03, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Hm. Naturopathic medicine is just one branch of alternative medicine. I removed it from the mainstream section. I don't think chiropractic should be listed without a caveat that it is not considered a mainstream medical specialty. JFW | T@lk 05:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Medical Physics

Im surprised medical physics isnt even mentioned in this article. Medical Physics graduate programs are quite common now in medical schools across the country.see list. I added a line in the Basic Sciences section.--Zereshk (talk) 04:15, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Agree, although the field of radiation is largely contained in radiology, radiation therapy and nuclear medicine. JFW | T@lk 05:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Medicine

Someone tell me how I put the user box on my user page if im interested in medicine. Once you have responded you may delete this article. Faln angel82 (talk) 20:28, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Have a look at WP:UBX. It's bound to be in there somewhere. JFW | T@lk 22:32, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

MCOTW

This article is MCOTW. I used to monitor it quite closely and many years ago feebly tried to knock it into some sort of shape. Never mind. Looking at it now, I think it tries to do too many things at the same time and yet fails to achieve exactly that. The section "clinical skills", for instance, tries to cover the entire breadth of history taking and examination, yet fails to generalise sufficiently to make the information of any use to the general reader. "Less is more", in many ways.

I propose that we leave the outline basically intact, but change the emphasis:

1. Medical traditions (as long as there's an authoritative source, we can go to town on this)
2. History of Western Medicine (remainder of the article about western, modern medicine)
3. Current practice

   Prevention and cure (the preventative and the curative "sector" contrasted)

   Branches of medicine (medical, surgical, supportive specialties, allied healthcare professions, related - e.g. veterinary)

   Clinical practice (history, examination, investigations, interventions, monitoring/follow-up, complications, medical error)

   Clinical research (evidence-based medicine, clinical studies, translational research, basic science)

   Clinical management (what does a doctor need to do in terms of management to be able to deliver healthcare, e.g. MDTs and risk management)

   Clinical education (how is medicine taught, importance of CPD)

   Regulation (medicine in the law - who may practice, who has a duty of care)

   Criticism of modern medicine (historical criticism should go in "History")

4. Alternative medicine (current alternatives only)

It goes without saying that the subsections of "current practice" may actually be better off as "level 2" headers. Before making a large copyedit that restructures the article along the above lines I'd love to have some consensus. JFW | T@lk 22:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Could we try to avoid the ghastly term "healthcare practitioner" so dreadfully popular in the USA and stick with "doctor" where possible? JFW | T@lk 22:51, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

Why not physician? II | (t - c) 01:57, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Because in the UK the term "physician" only applies to those practicing general (internal) medicine and its subspecialties. JFW | T@lk 08:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Just as a point of order, Criticisms sections are frowned upon in general, so moving this information into the article or just leaving it in the "See also" list might be a point to consider. SDY (talk) 01:23, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

We can't say that they are frowned upon in general -- just that they are frowned upon by some people. The "Criticism section" template was put up for deletion because it was seen as a way to avoid legitimate criticism sections to avoid NPOV, and you'll notice that the Keeps and Deletes were evenly split (I count 9 keeps, 10 deletes). The essay on criticism section is an essay for that reason. The economics article has a criticism section -- all articles which are large and controversial like this should have criticism sections, in my opinion, as the points raised in these sections often don't fit elegantly into other sections.

However, we may be able to avoid a criticism section with clever section titles. Probable criticisms center around iatrogenesis, relationship to pharmaceutical industry, medical malpractice, an emphasis on treatment rather than prevention, and research methods. Best to keep it summary style, and obviously much of these things could be forked off into other pages. Because of that, it may be best to bunch all of this stuff under one section: the criticism section. II | (t - c) 02:36, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure why we should avoid a criticism section here. There is certainly material to cover, such as Illich and such. Modern medicine is a relatively new phenomenon, and there are definitely clashes between the medical establishment and, for instance, religious leaders and politicians. It would be an ommission against NPOV if we were to suggest that medicine is without critics and criticism. JFW | T@lk 08:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Anglosaxon bias

Presently, in England, a typical medicine course at university is 5 years or 4 years if the student already holds a degree. Amongst some institutions and for some students, it may be 6 years (including the selection of an intercalated BSc—taking one year—at some point after the pre-clinical studies). All programs culminate in the Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery degree (abbreviated MB BChir, BM BCh, MB BCh, MB ChB, BM BS, MB BS etc.). This is followed by 2 clinical foundation years afterwards, namely F1 and F2 similar to internship training. Students register with the UK General Medical Council at the end of F1. At the end of F2, they may pursue further years of study.

In the US and Canada, a potential medical student must first complete an undergraduate degree in any subject before applying to a graduate medical school to pursue a (M.D. or D.O.) program. Some students opt for the research-focused MD/PhD dual degree, which is usually completed in 7-8 years. There are certain courses which are pre-requisite for being accepted to medical school, such as general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, English, labwork, etc. The specific requirements vary by school.

In Australia, there are two pathways to a medical degree. Students can choose to take a five or six year undergraduate medical degree Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS or BMed) straight from high school, or complete a bachelors degree (generally three years, usually in the medical sciences) and then apply for a four year graduate entry Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program.

I believe these 3 paragraphs should be eliminated or moved to a secondary article since they are too much specific for a general article and contain a clear "anglosaxon" bias. Not every educational system can be named, so it is better simply to stick to the general sentence stated just before the 3 paragraphs.--Garrondo (talk) 07:52, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Is there a general source we could use to generalise from? What does the WHO say in its worldwide accreditation programme for medical schools? JFW | T@lk 08:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, we should definitely include the criticism, but it should have enough weight and specificity to be discussed in the various sections of the article instead of a "angry patient target" section. Criticism sections tend to have NPOV problems or get into tortured "he said she said" arguments. SDY (talk) 14:22, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Aviccena

I'm going to add an Aviccena image to the article. I had previously and it was removed with no explanation. He is considered the Father of modern medicine after all. Lord of Moria (Avicenna) _Talk ^Contribs 11:13, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Malpractice / Misuse

In light of recent debate and a read-through, I think that the article is lacking an important section, i.e. the misuse of medicine. Since the dawn of time I suspect people have sold bogus services and products in the name of health improvement - how many magic elixirs and cure-alls have their been - not too mention unproven alternative therapies, so the amount of money lost to fraud in this field must be huge. I suppose this missing section would cover malpractice and fraudulent credentials as well. LeeVJ (talk) 10:57, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Health care, one word or two?

Would anyone object if "health care" is written as two words? I believe that is more standard. Maurreen 15:55, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I appologise health care should be quite maintainence of those selectivily chosen as i am out of contact wiht the well i think i will read your enclyclopedia and try an d make sense i appologise for my effort H T PAGE it wasnt need ed health care can be either or - however i firmly believe that health care is a trick of the devil and satan wants us to all think doctors can cure us when in reality it is only god that can heal us - god and the will of molloch, the dark one who dwells in the bowers of the earth... dormant... waiting... sleeping an enternal slumber as an ominous prelude to the indescribable destruction of mankind that he shall one day rain upon us from the skies with greath wrath and furious anger laying waste to our civilizations and lives like unto a terrible firestorm upon the smallest flower - praise JESUS! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.127.210.178 (talk) 01:37, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Can we nominate the above post as being POV of the year? It just exploded my detector.99.226.181.149 (talk) 07:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Criticism Section

I feel Illich's viewpoint on iatrogenesis is somewhat misrepresented in this article. Illich is more concerned with social iatrogenesis than conventional iatrogenesis. His criticism is more along the lines that medicine treats symptoms rather than causes of problems eg. treating diseases caused by air pollution results in air pollution becoming less of an issue. See Limits to Medicine (Illich 1976) chapter 2. 149.171.90.143 (talk) 06:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, especially having had a look at the criticism sections on other medical and alternative or complementary modalities. If iatrogenisis is now the third leading cause of death (as per WHO figures) in the US, there may be a valid place for some discussion of the subject in the criticism section to pull this into line with the WP 'balanced view'. Antoniolus —Preceding undated comment was added at 13:05, 7 November 2008 (UTC).

What about learning how to cite references properly, especially those lifted verbatim? The definition of 'medicine' is an exact replica found under Merriam-Webster's site, and the reference to the etymological meaning is complete bunk. Maybe one of your cretins responsible for this can actually compare the plagiarism? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/medicine. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.226.181.149 (talk) 07:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The Father of Medicine

Who is to be considered to be the father of Medicine? Hippocrates [2] or Avicenna? I have not heard of this man till now. It is possible that as more and more nations come out into the international limelight, new fathers for everything will come. The exact method of attributing such a title would be to see if the present day activities are a direct growth of that person's work. It is like attributing Indian democracy to Aristotle and Plato, when the reality is that it is a deliberate superimposition by the British rulers. I do not mean to belittle Avicenna's works, for it is possible that he is a genius, and an exception among his people. --Ved from Victoria Institutions (talk) 11:11, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Avicenna - Father of Modern medicine, Hippocrates - Father of medicine. Does that help? Avicenna is put among as a universal genius alongside Leoonardo da Vinci. サラは、私を、私の青覚えている。 _Talk ^Contribs 20:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Biomedicine

Greetings fellow editors =). I have a suggestion to create a separate article for "Biomedicine" which is the field of medical science. The Medician

Add datetime stamp to aid auto-archive —G716 <^T·_C> 03:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Pharmacists

"The physician's expertise comes from his knowledge of what is healthy and normal contrasted with knowledge and experience of other people who have suffered similar symptoms (unhealthy and abnormal), and the proven ability to relieve it with medicines (pharmacology) or other therapies about which the patient may initially have little knowledge, although the latter may be better performed by a pharmacist."

I'm changing the part about pharmacists possibly being better at prescribing medication, as it seems that pharmacists can't legally do that in any country, with the possible exception of Canada...

Add datetime stamp to aid auto-archive —G716 <^T·_C> 03:57, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Dubious

The article currently says that the word "doctor" (from Latin "teacher") was assigned to physicians (medical doctors) because, in a certain sense, the doctor teaches the patient. I doubt this is historically accurate. It conflicts with sourced information displayed in other articles, e.g. Doctor of Medicine#History of the medical degree.

There needs to be a reliable citation to that information, otherwise it has to be removed. --Antonielly (talk) 19:46, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Surgeon's working week

"A surgical resident's average work week is approximately 75 hours. Some subspecialties of surgery, such as neurosurgery, require even longer hours, and utilize an extension to the 80 hour regulated work week, allowing up to 88 hours per week. Many surgical programs still exceed this work hour limit. Attempts to limit the amount of hours worked has been difficult because of the large volume of patients who require surgical care, the limited amount of resources (including a shortage of people willing to enter into surgery as a career), the need to perform long operations and still provide care to all pre- and post-operative patients, and the need to provide constant coverage in the OR, ICU, and ER."

I removed this. It doesn't seem to belong in an article on medicine, maybe it belongs in Surgery or something even more specific like Surgeons in the USA. It's about as relevant as a paragraph in the article on Sport explaining the types of injuries basketball players typically suffer from. Actually I'd like to remove more waffle from this section, but I left it alone for now. There is SOME relevance in explaining that it takes time, effort and talent to become a surgeon. Farannan (talk) 01:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Dubious

The article currently says that the word "doctor" (from Latin "teacher") was assigned to physicians (medical doctors) because, in a certain sense, the doctor teaches the patient. I doubt this is historically accurate. It conflicts with sourced information displayed in other articles, e.g. Doctor of Medicine#History of the medical degree.

There needs to be a reliable citation to that information, otherwise it has to be removed. --Antonielly (talk) 19:46, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Surgeon's working week

"A surgical resident's average work week is approximately 75 hours. Some subspecialties of surgery, such as neurosurgery, require even longer hours, and utilize an extension to the 80 hour regulated work week, allowing up to 88 hours per week. Many surgical programs still exceed this work hour limit. Attempts to limit the amount of hours worked has been difficult because of the large volume of patients who require surgical care, the limited amount of resources (including a shortage of people willing to enter into surgery as a career), the need to perform long operations and still provide care to all pre- and post-operative patients, and the need to provide constant coverage in the OR, ICU, and ER."

I removed this. It doesn't seem to belong in an article on medicine, maybe it belongs in Surgery or something even more specific like Surgeons in the USA. It's about as relevant as a paragraph in the article on Sport explaining the types of injuries basketball players typically suffer from. Actually I'd like to remove more waffle from this section, but I left it alone for now. There is SOME relevance in explaining that it takes time, effort and talent to become a surgeon. Farannan (talk) 01:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Malpractice in Canada

Mihai cartoaje (talk · contribs) has now made the same edit several times, basically stating that if you want to file a medical malpractice suit in Canada, you have to do it within a certain period of time. This is no different in many other legislations (I believe it to be 3 years in the UK). However, this is grossly off-topic in an article that intends to cover the breadth of medical practice, medical history and the basic sciences. I have suggested to Mihai that he take this content to medical malpractice, where it might be relevant, but so far the responses on his talkpage have not indicated that he intends to follow up on this. Unless there is significant dissent I will continue to discourage this content from appearing here. JFW | T@lk 06:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Considering the article doesn't even give an adequate definition or context for malpractice, the statute of limitations seems arbitrary and silly. SDY (talk) 17:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

You admitted a conflict of interest on your user page. Conflict of interest edits are not allowed per RfAr/COFS. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 09:18, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I have only added Canada because other people can add other countries. It would be easier for the USA because there are websites that have many states on one page. This is an important topic. There is a lot of concern. See for example: [3].

I have filed a request for comments on Jfdwolff's misuse of administrator tools. It requires one more support in 48 hours. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 09:16, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Hiya, popping in as an uninvolved administrator. As I take a quick look at the situation, I think that everyone is acting in good faith, but that there are some differences of opinion that are not being handled as effectively as they could be. I recommend that everyone read Wikipedia:Dispute resolution. I think that an RfC on JFW/Jfdwolff is a bit premature, since a conduct RfC is usually only done after other attempts to resolve the dispute did not work. I haven't seen enough of those attempts. Perhaps Mihai's content is a bit too detailed for this article, but there's a big tag at the top of the article that does request citations, so it seems kind of ironic that when Mihai added something that was carefully cited, that the first reaction was to delete it. Generally when there is sourced information added to an article, it's not a good idea to just delete it out of hand. Better would be to merge it to some other location. JFW, I realize that you weren't threatening to personally block Mihai, but it did seem a bit of an over-reaction to tell him that he might be blocked, when all he did was make a few well-sourced edits over the course of a month. Mihai also has a point, that there's no mention of malpractice anywhere in this entire "Medicine" article. There's not even a "see also". The word malpractice doesn't appear anywhere in the entire article, which seems like it may be a violation of our neutrality policy. One way to handle this, would be per WP:SUMMARY, to move the malpractice section to Medical malpractice, and then maybe add a line in the "Legal" section in this article, like {{seealso|Medical malpractice}} But that's up to the editors here. The main thing that's needed, is to try and talk things out and find a compromise. If that doesn't work, file an article RfC, which will request opinions from more editors. I recommend trying either the "science" or "society" subtopics. Hope that helps, --Elonka 17:08, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

The content doesn't appear to belong in this article. As has been suggested by multiple editors, Medical malpractice looks like the right article for it. Hopefully, Mihai cartoaje will provide some rationale, rather than continuing to violate WP:TALK. --Ronz (talk) 21:02, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Being a practicing doctor does in no way give me a conflict of interest in this particular issue. I have asked Mihai more than just once to justify why we need a large ream of information on the legal restrictions to malpractice suits in one particular country, bang in the middle of a very general article that discusses the scope of medicine worldwide.

Elonka, I'm all for a few words on malpractice, but that's not what Mihai is doing. Just the fact that he provides sources is no justification for violating WP:WEIGHT in this article. My warning about blocking did not come out of thin air: this is a user who has been asked numerous times to discuss his perennial edit on this talkpage, but instead throws around accusations of COI that he cannot back up. That's what I call tendentious editing. But this is not about Mihai but about his edits to this article. JFW | T@lk 22:48, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Having information about the statute of limitations on medical malpractice for several provinces in Canada is a grossly excessive amount of detail for this article. Even for medical malpractice it seems excessive; perhaps the as-yet imaginary aricle medical malpractice in Canada would be apppropriate. In context, there are something like 150 countries in the world. Each has several administrative divisions; let's assume it's 10 per country. To give equal weight to every single one of them, we would need a list or paragraph with 1500 citations. Does that strike anyone else as excessive? Medical malpractice seems most appropriate as a link in see also, perhaps as part of a sentence in Medicine#Legal restrictions (Doctors who are negligent in their care of patients can face charges of medical malpractice and subject to legal or professional sanctions - sound good?). WLU (talk) 17:16, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Yet, the same piece of content was readded by Mihai, supporting himself with Elonka's view (but against myself and a number of other editors). Perhaps we need to talk about medical malpractice, but the most important piece of information is not that there is a statutory limitation. That is a technicality that belongs in the subarticle. Strange, I have the feeling Mihai will escalate this to ANI/RFAr or some other forum, like last time. JFW | T@lk 22:28, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

And again, the perennial edit has returned. Now, Mihai also wants us to know that psychiatric patients receive poor care. Again, is this really important enough to discuss in the main article? I have no idea why I should have a conflict of interest, as Mihai alleges, and I am certainly unclear about which Arbcomm case he is referring to. JFW | T@lk 00:26, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Please don't remove references or information from the article. Doctors sometimes oppose malpractice lawsuits because it increases their insurance. That gives them a conflict of interest. I have linked to that arbcom case at least 3 times now. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 11:38, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You are making a basic mistake. You are suggesting that I oppose your edit because I oppose negligence lawsuits. I think you would do best to assume good faith and accept my reasoning rather than guess any motives. As I have said, I oppose your edit because it mentions excessive detail with regards to negligence legislation. I do not oppose the need to discuss the concept of medical negligence and the possible recourse in law. I do oppose your continuous reinsertion of the same "warning" that unless you sue your psychiatrist fast it may be too late. JFW | T@lk 20:36, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I also think that this information is out of place in this article. Details belong in medical malpractice or statutes of limitations or even in country-specific articles. I have removed the inappropriate focus on laws in North America and left a general statement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

The information on statute of limitations is different from everything else in the section. It belongs in its own subsection. Alison Hymes is a recognised expert in the field [4]. That makes it a reliable source. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 22:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't, however, indicate that it should be included in the article. WP:WEIGHT applies, but it's mostly a question of WP:TOPIC and WP:SUMMARY. The last two are just MoS guidelines, but there's some good sense behind them. The chance that a person reading a general article on medicine cares about malpractice is reasonable, statutes of limitation is small, and the chance that they care about statutes of limitation in one particular country approaches zero. See also WP:HTRIVIA. SDY (talk) 23:30, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I provided evidence above that it is an iportant topic and therefore not trivia. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 08:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the information regarding statutes of limitatons. This does not belong here. I have also removed the WP:WEIGHT content stating that those with mental illness get suboptimal care. This belongs in subarticles, as I have argued extensively above. I wish Mihai started making useful contributions and stopped pushing the same content over and over. This is all a massive distraction and prevents the development of this article. JFW | T@lk 12:54, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Given that the paragraph above already links to medical malpractice I am inclined to agree that this level of detail is more appropriate there. AlexandrDmitri (talk) 18:23, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Legal controls

As initiator, I have stated my opinion in the section above, but in short-the information that has been added regarding specific rules for specific jurisdictions is inappropriate for the overall article and is best left to the articles that specifically address malpractice or country-specific articles on regulation of the practice of medicine. SDY (talk) 04:26, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

SDY, thanks for initiating this RFC. The content about statutes of limitations is being added repeatedly by Mihai cartoaje (talk · contribs). I started a discussion above (#Malpractice in Canada) to find some consensus about the matter. Apart from Mihai and a single other editor, there were no voices in favour.

The main issue here is WP:WEIGHT. Mihai wants to draw attention specifically to the fact that in the USA and Canada, if you don't bring a malpractice suit within a certain number of years, it is not likely to be received by the courts. This is highly relevant for the medical malpractice article, because in many cases the consequences of malpractice are only fully apparent many years later (e.g. shoulder dystocia and resultant Erb's paresis may take many years to be fully treated). However, it is rather too detailed for this article.

Mihai has been forum shopping this issue numerous times (I count an RFC and a RFAr). I wish we could again try to achieve consensus about the matter. JFW | T@lk 11:28, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose details I simply don't think that a statement like "In Canada, if you think your psychiatrist misdiagnosed you, then you have to file your lawsuit within four years" (which is how I interpret the regular wrangling in this and other articles) is really important to Medicine. It's a single country, a single detail, and really only a tangential connection to the field of medicine. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• Comment Maybe I'm just a contrarian, but if this article were featured, I wouldn't be bothered if mentioned some of the details that Mihae added [5] with better sourcing. It's not a worldwide perspective, yes, but likely at least 75% of our readers are from Anglo-American English-speaking countries: the U.S., Canada, England, and Australia/New Zealand. These countries share the common law legal system, have similar pro-capitalist policies, and have similar medical malpractice laws. Say that the statute of limitations varies between 1 and 4 years and maybe you've got a significant (and highly relevant) portion of world covered -- U.S., Canada, England, and maybe even more. Because of the language (and economic) barrier, it may be quite difficult to cover "the whole world", as we've discovered in water fluoridation, where Continental Europe ended water fluoridation but the details behind why remain vague. II | (t - c) 21:12, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

• Previously uninvolved RFC comment: That seems like too irrelevant of a detail for the article that is supposed to cover the very broad topic of medicine. At best, this would go into an article like medical malpractice, and even then we wouldn't be bogged down with the different jurisdictions. Cool Hand Luke 04:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
• Comment . As per Luke, it belongs in malpractice. The section needs rewrite also. Kevin McCready (talk) 08:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
• An uninvolved administrator wrote that we are allowed to summarize satellite articles in summary articles, and that it remained to be determined how much detail to include. So I wrote the shortest summary I could compose. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 10:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, and all other editors, including other administrators, disagreed with this person. When trying to build consensus, administrator status does not provide any added leverage. JFW | T@lk 16:43, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

My concern is simply that if we are going to include further detail on medical malpractice, we should be discussing briefly what kind of behavior is considered "mal-." Statutes of limitations are legal details that don't help the reader understand "the big picture" and this is the overview article and the gestalt is really all that matters, not the specifics. SDY (talk) 13:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree. The most important aspect of medical malpractice is surely not the time limit for filing a lawsuit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Malpractice is behaviour that is worse than an average doctor. Negligence or intentional harm can be malpractice. --Mihai cartoaje (talk) 19:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

• Comment:I have a hard time seeing how this belongs in a medicine article. Inclusion of the wiki page on malpractice in the see also section would be appropriate. I have a hard time seeing who this is significant to an article on medicine, and more than a section on the cultural perception of ambulance chasing would be appropriate on an article on "Law".ChillyMD (talk) 18:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: per my remark above there is already a link to medical malpractice in the paragraph above, which to me seems the most appropriate article to discuss legal details. This is an overview of Medecine - if we can include the Statute of limitations in Canada, then where do we stop? Why not aortic dissection in France? AlexandrDmitri (talk) 18:32, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Article is very Western based

This article seems to be very Western based (images/text) - or perhaps that's the intention. Yes it does mention other world medicine in one sentence, but it could be less bias and greatly improved considering it's under the title "Medicine" and not "Western Medicine".twinqletwinqle (talk) 02:15, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Modern medicine is pretty "western" in nature. International organizations like the WHO work within that system, so having the article focus on it isn't really bias, it's just what mainstream medicine is. It's not entirely "Western" either, since there's a heavy influence from the Islamic world. It could probably make better mention of the modern practices of TCM and Ayurveda and other traditional systems, but the undeniably dominant form of modern medical science is derived from what I guess I'd call the "Mediterranean" tradition. SDY (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

• I am perfectly at ease with the Western/modern/neighborhood-of-the-home-of-civilizations focus defended by SDY. The medicine people want is whatever offers the best healing they can afford -- except if they are in the thrall of life-denying beliefs that flourish for various reasons, and especially where the hope of sustaining life is most tenuous. Where means of staying alive are relatively abundant, relatively great energy is mobilized for improving the availability of effective medicine. For instance, a religious worker in the high elevations of the Andes noticed that manual laborers used a poisonous bark to moderate chills induced by exposure, said "Hmm, maybe it'll do some good for the chills attributed to the bad airs of the Roman marshes", and sent it off to be tried out. It's thus by dumb luck -- and the ability of wealth to send knowledge and interesting substances halfway around the world -- that quinine is used as "Western" medicine, to poison the malaria (mal = bad, aria = air) parasite in both imperialist soldiers and tropical peasants. The article "Medicine" should focus on the established best practices, whether art or science, of healing, and that will make it lopsidedly "Western". There's also some established knowledge about what people do that is not established as part of best practices; no doubt some of that will turn into part of future best practices, but that hope doesn't give it a place in the medicine article, other than via a link in Medicine to, perhaps Alternative and supplementary medicine or Alternative and complementary medicine or Natural healing or Aruvedic medicine (I am at least the third editor to use that spelling on a talk page; i've made it a Rdr, and y'r welcome). No, not all medical theories are equal, nor equally deserving of a place in the accompanying article.
  --Jerzy•t 15:17, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
  

Art vs. Science

I may have missed coverage in the accompanying article of the tension and balance between "art and science [in] medicine". I'm told that "[Western] medicine is 20% science. The rest is a collective hunch", which i understand to reflect costs and ethical limits on human experimentation, and the consequent need of doctors to make educated guesses where e.g., possible mechanisms' energy costs and evolutionary impacts remain unknowable. Not a simple matter to research, but IMO worth the attempt. Anyone?
--Jerzy•t 16:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

In my estimation, its more 75% science, 25% art. Now, thats not to say there aren't different ways to interpret the science and the human body doesn't behave like a textbook. Not sure exactly what you want added though, as this is all likely to be just opinion anyways. ChillyMD (talk) 02:52, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was unmoved. — Danger (talk) 12:59, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

---

Medicine → Medicine (craft) — I propose to move the article to Medicine (craft) and to inmediatelly place a tag for a merger with Health care. Medicine can then redirect firstly to either "Medication" or to medicine (disambigation)

According to Merriam Websters dictionary: 1 : a substance or preparation used in treating disease 2 a : the science and art dealing with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease b : the branch of medicine concerned with the nonsurgical treatment of disease

as such, medicine thus clearly refer to the "medication", and only in a secondary meaning to the craft. see http://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/medicine

KVDP (talk) 12:44, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

• I oppose the move. Medicine is not a craft, but an art or a science.
• I Oppose the merger. As might be expected, Health care is largely the economics of medicine; this differentiation should be completed and endouraged, but there is two articles' worth of stuff between them.
• If you're going to merge, there is no reason to move. The result will be a redirect at medicine (craft) (or wherever this article winds up, and a larger article at Health care. We can do both without a move. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:33, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose This is the article I expect when I think of Medicine, to me this is the common name and the primary topic. Health care is a separate topic and this should not be merged into it. ~~ GB fan ~~ ^talk 00:58, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose the usage of the word "medicine" to refer to (often liquid) medications is rather old-fashioned. Nowadays we say, "Nobel Prize for Medicine", and "Alternative Medicine", without any sense of "a substance or preparation used in treating disease". Abductive (reasoning) 02:44, 13 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Medication is a perfectly legitimate (and I dare say more common) name for the pharmaceutical substances. Leaving the two articles as-is avoids awkward parenthetical disambiguation, and is therefore preferable. The {{otheruses}} template is quite sufficient for the purpose. —INTRIGUEBLUE (talk|contribs) 18:12, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. The status quo is best. Medicine is the craft in its pure form, and Health Care is a separate concept that implies a delivery system, so the two should not be merged. The little pills you take may be called either medication or medicine, but medicine is defined above, and "Medication" covers the pills (etc.) well. Disambigs and parentheticals will complicate things unnecessarily. - Draeco (talk) 01:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Support — Despite being ambiguous and having over 10x more incoming links than Medication, Medicine has under 5x more page views. Medicine gets some (and possibly a large fraction) of its page views from readers who actually want to view Medication. Many incoming links to Medicine are due to transcluded navboxes of low relevance, and a rather disturbing number of incoming links should be changed to link to Medication or to articles about specialties within the medical profession. (These probably should be listed on the dab page.) So on the whole I think moving Medicine (disambiguation) to the base name would be constructive. However, I can see the objection to the page name Medicine (craft); how about Medicine (practice) or Medicine (profession)? --Una Smith (talk) 03:08, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Page name	Page views September 2009	Incoming links from articles
Medicine	87329	10000+
Medication	20616	1000
Medicine (disambiguation)	918	N/A

• • Do these numbers properly exclude the 54 templates that link to these articles? I believe that navboxes are transcluded, which means that a plain old "What links here" search gets you articles that don't link to this page anywhere in the article proper. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  I excluded transcluded links to Medicine, because there were so many; I did not bother doing that for Medication. --Una Smith (talk) 14:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. Medicine defined as the art and science of healing sits uncomfortably with a parenthetical qualifier such as craft, practice, etc. That ought to be a strong reason to retain this title. We would not, in fact, make life any easier for someone looking for Medication who types 'medicine' into the search box. At present, they arrive here and their intended destination is one click away (using the hat-note). If Medicine became a dab-page, then typing 'medicine' into the search box still would require one click to navigate from the resulting dab page to the article Medication. A lot of loss for no gain. --RexxS (talk) 03:58, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  My concern is the 10000+ incoming links to Medicine. A large fraction of a large number is a large number. Putting the dab page at Medicine would enable us to ensure the incoming links go directly to the intended article. --Una Smith (talk) 14:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  It seems to me that this would result in 100% of the links going to the 'wrong' page, since no reader really wants to end up at the disambiguation page, no matter what the context is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  That's what Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links is for. Those 10000+ links would get fixed promptly, then whenever the number of incoming links goes over 100 or so the page would go back on the monthly to-do list. Clinical is on this month's list, by the way. --Una Smith (talk) 22:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose Sure, there will be some imperfect links, but "Medicine" is more than just a "craft" or "profession". It's also a body of knowledge that is distinct from the practice of medicine. I don't think that readers will be astonished to find an article about this knowledge/profession under the title of "Medicine". We should arrange things so that people who are looking for "medication" don't have any trouble finding that subject, but that can be done without moving this one out of its primary position. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:04, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  A "body of knowledge that is distinct from the practice of medicine" calls for a separate article, doesn't it? Medicine (practice) and Medicine (science). --Una Smith (talk) 14:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  There's a stub called Medical practice already. I wouldn't call it 'distinct' from medicine, but it has its own article that could do with expansion. --RexxS (talk) 16:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  Disambiguation on Wikipedia concerns articles, nothing more. Many clusters of related articles have a dab page at the relevant base name. --Una Smith (talk) 22:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose One would say medication no medicine for pharmaceuticals.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:00, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose I see where your coming from, but medication is a more apt term for the description of pharmaceuticals. The term 'medicine' immediately, to me, implies the practice/art/science, not medication. Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  16:26, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't think that medicine was ever an art or craft. I don't think that it ever will be. I always considered it a science. Also, it is debatable as to whether it is an art or science, so I cannot support this change. As for naming pharmaceuticals "medicine," I cannot support this either, as medication is a more modern name. It is also considered appropriate diction for an encyclopedia such as this. Tyrol5 [Talk] 19:25, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose we have "medication", "pharmaceuticals", "drugs" as possible names for substances. Medicine is a body of knowledge, an area of health care (vs Surgery) and an (artful application of science) approach at treatment (vs say a different approach of psychology), as well as possibly the treatment itself. But even where it is used for "drug", the term has connotations with the methodology of diagnosis that underlies the prescribing, formulation and administration of the substance - whereas "medication" is very much just a chemical object. David Ruben ^Talk 19:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  On a side note medicines is clearly about medication (except in some awkward phrasings eg "Coventional & Alternative Medicines are disciplines that aim for health and wellbeing"), but currently redirectes to Medicine - can I do an uncontroversial switch of medicines redirecting to medication vs medicine ? David Ruben ^Talk 19:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  Good catch! I can see no reason at all why that redirect shouldn't be changed. Boldly do it - the worst that could happen is it gets reverted and discussed. --RexxS (talk) 19:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  I changed the redirect, to point to Pharmaceutical drug. Eubulides (talk) 21:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  That calls for a hatnote on Pharmaceutical drug. --Una Smith (talk) 22:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. In the context of an encyclopedia, "medicine" is far more likely to mean the field of medicine, than to mean "drug". For example, Wikipedia:Featured articles has a section "Health and medicine", which is just fine: it shouldn't be renamed to "Health and the craft of medicine" or anything like that. Eubulides (talk) 21:53, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  Yes, but does the article now occupying the page name Medicine satisfy WP:PRIMARYTOPIC? --Una Smith (talk) 22:59, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

  IMHO, yes. Our article Surgery "is a medical specialty" rather than directly/exclusively the operative treatments (aka "surgical operation"), but then quickly goes into both the types of surgery and the surgical specialties & sub-specialties. This medicine article is a direct mirror, with "Clinical practice" section listing various approaches in medicine and then "Branches section" (of course gets more complex than this as "Surgery" is both part of overall "Medicine" when used in its widest context of healthcare provided by doctors/hospital/clinical staff, but also separate when one thinks of the split of medical and surgical disciplines). As such both Medicine & Surgery articles are somewhat of a mixure of the fields, the treatment approaches and the range of doctors who practice -i.e. umbrella artices at the top of (multiple) further lesser articles (i.e. disambiguate to a wider selection of articles) David Ruben ^Talk 01:36, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

• Comment. "Medicine" rarely means "drug" in American English, but I'm thinking the folks on the other side of the pond may use it more frequently in that sense, given what MHRA ("Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency") stands for. SDY (talk) 01:11, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

  But that is "Medicines ..." (not "Medicine...") which is clearly about drugs, see above redirect agreement. Also whilst "Medicine" is about the field of healthcare (i.e. it can be capitalised, or at least thought of as such), "medicine" (as in "take your medicine", or "It is important that a medicine is taken at the dose prescribed") will not be a capitalised word (excluding start of sentances). Context of using the word is important; so also in example you give, "medicine" is part of a list (the other being non-drug "healthcare products") of treatment regulation, were this a professional practice agency then I think wording would be "Medical and Surgical Regulatory Agency" (rather than "Medicine and Surgery Regulatory Agency"). David Ruben ^Talk 01:36, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

"Medicines" is unambiguously drugs, "medicine" is ambiguous. Googling "medicine paracetamol", I get things like this site, "Paracetamol (Para-seeta-moll) is a medicine which is used in neuralgia, symptomatic relief of colds and flu, treatment of headaches and treatment of rheumatic pain. Then again, an obviously American site, uses the word as well "Don’t take more than one medicine that contains acetaminophen at a time." I frankly don't think that anyone will be amazed or confused that medicine redirects to an article about the practice of medicine. A hatnote in this article (what we have now) would be about the extent of what I'd go with. I believe that this article as written satisfies the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC expectations, because "medicine" meaning drug or medication or pharmaceutical has many other appropriate names. SDY (talk) 06:53, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose. The term "Medicine" most accurately describes all aspects of healing the body. Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:03, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Seems like consensus is to oppose the move. Would someone uninvolved mind closing this? Regards, --—Cyclonenim | Chat  11:48, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

serological diagnosis- a much easier and effective method of parasitic diagnosis

serology is the study of antigen antibody interactions aswell as serving as an aid to the diagnosis of infectious diseases. almost every infectius diseases is caused by a pathogen which could either be a virus or bacteria. these pathogens produce antigens when they get into a host and hence the host immune systerm will also produce specialised immunoglobulins known as antibodies and these anti bodies will thern bind with specific antigens to form immune complexes. it is therefore these binding between antigens and antibodies that diagnosis can be made. hence there is the need to develop reagents and also commercially produce these antigens to aid in diagnoses in the laboratory

by: RUFUS AKINKAGLE
VETERINARY COLLEGE
TAMALE, GHANA —Preceding unsigned comment added by Akingus (talk • contribs) 19:13, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Scientific medicine, versus Ayurveda, TCM, etc.

While most readers of the English wikipedia associate medicine with the western science-based practice, other practices such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda also lay large claims to the term worldwide. I propose that the Medicine article be renamed to Modern medicine, Western medicine, or even Hippocratic medicine — and that the Medicine page become a redirect or a disambiguation page. --Stybn (talk) 20:31, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The article is about the discipline considered to be mainstream medicine all over the world. Neither Ayurveda nor TCM are considered mainstream outside their respective geographical areas, and very possibly not there either. I certainly wouldn't call it "Hippocratic medicine" - that system largely died out in the 19th century, although it persists in India as Unani. Brunton (talk) 10:44, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I spent three weeks in a couple of cities in India last November, and the only references to Ayurveda I saw were in TV ads for a hair gel. If it's there, it's not obvious or it's a rural phenomenon. This issue of "what is medicine?" has been discussed before, and that major international organizations recognize the Arab-Greek school is an obvious piece of evidence. Homeopathy and Naturopathy are relatively modern and definitely Western, but they're not part of Medicine as most would define the word. SDY (talk) 16:09, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I think a move is a good idea, and suggest a new name be come up with for this article. (Maybe Mainstream Medicine) I don't think this should be done due to any large amount of varying interpretation of the term, but rather because medicine is often used as a noun meaning a substances used in treating disease or illness; medicament; remedy. Also there should be a new article, explicitly dealing the history of medicine. It would also be valuable to include in this article, how alternative medicine is becoming incorporate into the mainstream (one example of this is the Integrative Medicine program at Duke, another is foreign researchers initiating clinical studies on herbs coming from their respective countries' system of traditional medicine which in turn are used in the creation of prescription drugs). Rolyatleahcim (formerly known as Zzzmidnight) (talk) 06:23, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Misuse of sources

A request for comments has been filed concerning the conduct of Jagged 85 (talk · contribs). Jagged 85 is one of the main contributors to Wikipedia (over 67,000 edits, he's ranked 198 in the number of edits), and practically all of his edits have to do with Islamic science, technology and philosophy. This editor has persistently misused sources here over several years. This editor's contributions are always well provided with citations, but examination of these sources often reveals either a blatant misrepresentation of those sources or a selective interpretation, going beyond any reasonable interpretation of the authors' intent. I searched the page history, and found 27 edits by Jagged 85 (for example, see this edits). Tobby72 (talk) 20:44, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

That's an old and archived RfC. The point is still valid though. Tobby72 (talk) 21:26, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Mechanic arts

There is a mention in the mechanic arts article that medicine was once considered to be one of the "seven mechanical arts". However it is not clear in that article what significance that was; however it may be a useful addition to the history section, but I am not knowledgeable enough to make that change. Mentioned here in case someone else is... Dhollm (talk) 19:22, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Neurosciences

Waithought (talk · contribs) has repeatedly modified the article to create a category of subspecialties that he calls "clinical neurosciences". This is meant to include anaesthetics, rehabilitation medicine and psychiatry. Some organisations may choose to organise their services this way, but I don't think that this classification is widely accepted and should be reflected into this article. JFW | T@lk 23:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Correct me if I am wrong, but your posting seems to suggest that psychiatry is not widely regarded as a clinical neuroscience. Please refer to the website of the Society for Neuroscience - which is the world's largest academic organization dedicated to neuroscience. <http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=whatIsNeuroscience>

A quote from that page: 'Clinical neuroscientists — psychiatrists, neurologists and other medical specialists — use basic research findings to develop diagnostic methods and ways to prevent and treat neurological disorders that affect millions of people.'

Wikipedia should be evidence-based, rather than based on personal opinions. There is substantial evidence backing up why these specialties are neuroscience-related - it is not just how certain organizations choose to organize their services. Please refer to the posting below for the evidence behind my proposal (and further evidence available upon request).Waithought (talk) 00:25, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

They are related to the academic field of neuroscience, but I do not accept that psychiatrists, rehabilitation doctors and addiction specialists regard themselves as "clinical neuroscientists". That's a step too for. Of course the Society for Neuroscience will do whatever it can to widen their sphere of influence, but it is simply not the way things are. I'm not sure why you have opened a separate thread below to discuss exactly the same issue. JFW | T@lk 09:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

I am shocked that the founder of the WikiProject Medicine would make a comment like, 'cf course the Society for Neuroscience will do whatever it can to widen their sphere of influence, but it is simply not the way things are.' Again, the Society of Neuroscience is the world's largest and most well-respected academic organization dedicated to neuroscience. The background information they post on their website reflects the view of a large number of academics (including medical doctors) worldwide involved in neuroscience endeavours - not only research, but also education and clinical work. Your statement is tremendously disrespectful.

It is especially disappointing - given what you guys have been promoting in the J Med Internet Res. 2011 Jan 31;13(1):e14 paper - Wikipedia: a key tool for global public health promotion. Quote: 'We invite the medical community to join in editing Wikipedia, with the goal of providing people with free access to reliable, understandable, and up-to-date health information.'

You can disagree with the editorial changes proposed by other contributors - but that should be backed by EVIDENCE, not personal opinions like 'this is simply not the way things are', 'I do not accept that psychiatrists... regard themselves as "clinical neuroscientists"' etc. The WikiProject Medicine has been a wonderful initiative, but the entries should reflect the reality (which is ever-changing) - not only the founder's opinions. These fields might not have been regarded as 'clinical neurosciences' when you were in medical school - but people in these fields will know how much things have advanced in the past 5-10 years.

Most important of all, for the benefit of the WikiProject Medicine and Wikipedia as a whole, please stop making condescending comments/ungrounded accusations towards well-established academic organizations - especially when you would describe yourself as a 'scientist'.Waithought (talk) 21:06, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid I agree with JFW on this one. I don't see a reason to promote neuroscience as a "special" branch of medicine. There are many interdisciplinary programs in medicine, and unless we want to talk about all of them we should not give neuroscience special treatment. SDY (talk) 22:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

SDY - I'm actually okay with JFW not agreeing with the proposal, and I also see your point. That's why I tried to find an alternative solution - which JFW seemed to be okay too.

What I was writing above actually referred to JFW's ungrounded accusations towards the Society of Neuroscience and the way how he would dismiss others' evidence-based suggestions solely based on his personal opinions, rather than objective evidence. The way how you (SDY) expressed your opinion was very rational and I totally saw your point - and I agreed with you (SDY) that neuroscience should not be given undue weight in this article.

As such, I decided to respond to JFW's March 10/2011 comments here not because I would like to discuss about the 'neuroscience-related specialties' issue any further. I was just hoping that a culture of evidence-based and rational discussion can be maintained/promoted in Wikipedia and WikiProject Medicine. I respect JFW for having initiated the very worthwhile WikiProject Medicine - and would hate to see the project going astray.Waithought (talk) 00:10, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Evidence-based is not the only guiding star here, there's a certain amount of disrespect for the rules, mostly because strict application of absolute principles can and has been abused. Common sense still comes before "evidence based" unless you can prove through sources that common sense is explicitly wrong (or if common sense does not exist with a technical topic). The evidence that you provided supporting your position was not convincing to show that a substantial change has happened in the way the practice of medicine is organized, which is what was originally proposed in the article. There is a culture of "evidence-based and rational discussion" and providing evidence is necessary but not sufficient to make a potentially controversial change. There are too many sources, even ones you might expect to be reliable, that distort reality to meet what they want (e.g. the extreme variety in possible death tolls from the Chernobyl accident), and just citing a source does not make it truth. SDY (talk) 21:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Neuroscience-related medical specialties

In order to help audience of Wikipedia, especially those outside the medical field, to appreciate that neuroscience/nervous system is a common theme across many seemingly distinct medical specialties, I propose to create a category of 'neuroscience-related medical specialties' - just like how specialties have been grouped together under surgery, internal medicine or diagnostic specialties.

There are numerous sources to support this proposal. See, for instance, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) (one of the top 5 medical schools in US) Institute of Neurological Sciences: http://www.med.upenn.edu/ins/cnst.html

Quote: 'The nervous system is the only system of the body commonly represented by an undergraduate major, and many medical students come to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine especially interested in Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurosurgery. These, and closely allied specialties, including neuroradiology, neuropathology, ophthalmology, otorhinolaryngology, anesthesiology, and rehabilitation medicine, constitute the clinical neurosciences.'

From this UPenn page, it can also be seen that they have created a 'clinical neuroscience track' at the UPenn medical school 'to train clinical neuroscience specialists who will participate at the forefront of clinical and academic practice, and disease oriented research. The program combines curricular enrichment in the neurosciences, mentoring, special extracurricular activities and research opportunities within the four-year medical school structure.'

Clearly, at least at UPenn, the term 'clinical neuroscience' is not only referring to research endeavours, but also clinical practice and beyond.

By referring these specialties as 'neuroscience-related', I did not imply that a clinician in rehabilitation medicine - for instance - should regard themselves as 'practising neuroscientists'. They certainly should not do so. All I was trying to get across is that there's a common theme across these specialties, namely the nervous system.

If 'neuroscience-related' is too strong a word, one could consider 'nervous system-related' specialties - but that may be too awkward a term.

Other than the above listed specialties, 'addiction medicine' definitely would be a neuroscience-related specialty - as addiction mechanisms are brain-based. See, for instance, <www.camh.net/Research/Areas_of_research/Neuroscience/clinical_neuroscience.html>

'Pain management' is certainly neuroscience-related as well - as pain perception is based in the central nervous system. See, for instance, University of Manchester http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/clinicalneurosciences/research/humanpain/

I think it is self-evident that 'Clinical neurophysiology' is neuroscience-related.

Some other sources supporting that physiatry (i.e. rehabilitation medicine), opthalmology and anesthesiology are neuroscience-related:

Physiatry - Washington University (one of the top 5 medical schools in US) - physiatry residency program is offered through Dept of Neurology <http://neuro.wustl.edu/education/pmrresidency/>

Ophthalmology - see: University College London <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/neuroscience/Page.php?ID=11> Quote: 'At UCL, clinical neuroscience research spans the entire spectrum of neurological, ophthalmic and psychiatric disorders in both children and adults.'

Or: Karolinska Institute Dept of Clinical Neuroscience Research: <http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=36147&l=en>

Anesthesiology - with a major focus on pain control, it is certainly related to neurosciences. See, for instance, 'Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care'

Thanks.Waithought (talk) 23:12, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

While it's reasonable to classify these as a group, they were also perfectly reasonable under the previous way they were classified, and promoting neuroscience as "special" is giving it more weight than warranted. It's an important group, true, but all of the other headings are for "supergroups": it'd be like having a list of vertebrates, invertebrates, and cats. SDY (talk) 01:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The current solution is reasonable, but I don't want you (Waithought) to repeat previous edits to the effect that these clinical specialties are somehow umbrellafied by the label "neurosciences". That is simply not the way things are. Universities may choose to bunch academic departments in these fields together, but I think you'd be overstating your case if you said that a psychiatrist would regard herself as a "clinical neuroscientist with an interest in psychiatry" or somesuch. JFW | T@lk 09:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Merge from Medical practice

The section Medicine#Clinical practice is much more comprehensive than the entire article of Medical practice, and I don't see why Medical practice can't simply be merged to this article. If Medical practice should be a fork from the section Medicine#Clinical practice, then it should at least be a little bit more synchronized first, so that the bulk of the text is in the forked article. Mikael Häggström (talk) 13:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Jesanj (talk) 15:32, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Practice vs Drugs

This gives primary meaning as "the science and art of healing", and Medication as the drugs which are used as medicine. However, Wiktionary [[6]] has #1 as the drugs, #2 as "treatment or cure", #3 as "The study of the cause, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease or illness" and #4 as "The profession of physicians, surgeons and related specialisms; those who practice medicine". So this article has wiktionary's #3 and #4 dealed here, but #1 in a different article. Feels somehow odd. 82.141.119.188 (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, just noticed that "Medication" actually redirects to Pharmaceutical drug. Oh, nice. 82.141.119.188 (talk) 22:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Why "ugh"? --75.92.61.32 (talk) 02:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Scope of article

Is this article only about "human medicine" (note: that link redirects here), i.e., the healing of human beings? And is the division between human medicine and veterinary medicine a deliberate editorial decision?

If so, what does this say about the usage of the term "non-human animal" to mean regular animals, i.e., when anyone other than a biologist is talking? --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

File:IbnSina-Dushanbe.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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Pharmakeia is the Greek word for Medicine

pharmakeia is the Greek word for medicine and the modern transliteration of Pharmakeia is Pharmacia which is a word used in many places of the world in place of the word medicine. I believe this should be added to the article to help people find the information they seek on the internet. 2602:306:C518:62C0:1E75:8FF:FEBB:2125 (talk) 14:24, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Note that the Greek wikipedia names their medicine article as Ιατρική. Pharmakeia is too much associated with pharmacy in the modern language, English or any other (though they might be synonymous at some time in the old past). Materialscientist (talk) 22:30, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Pharmakeia is the word we get pharmaceutical from and means medicine. 2602:306:C518:62C0:1E75:8FF:FEBB:2125 (talk) 23:01, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Only in the meaning of "drug", "pharmacy", not as the more general field of science (medicine). Materialscientist (talk) 23:38, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Material Scientist, could you please transliterate your Greek word Ιατρική? 2602:306:C518:62C0:1E75:8FF:FEBB:2125 (talk) 23:05, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

Something like iatriki (stress on the last syllabus). Materialscientist (talk) 23:38, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

According to Google Translator, Materialscientist's Greek word Ιατρική means "medicine" in English. Here's the proof. The list that contains possible changes doesn't even contain the word "pharmacy"! --BScMScMD (talk) 23:36, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

φαρμακεια or pharmakeia translates out in modern Greek on the Google translator as "pharmacies"... These word forms are still the origen of the English words Pharmaceutical, Pharmacy, Pharmaceuticalist, Pharmaceuticalism, Pharmacists, Pharmacopia etc.. A pharmacy is of course the dispenser or medicines or pharmaceuticals. The modern transliteration Pharmacia is used in many places of the world and means medicine or pharmaceuticals. 2602:306:C518:62C0:1E75:8FF:FEBB:2125 (talk) 00:34, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

φαρμακος or Pharmakos is a pharma word and it translates out as medicine in the Google translator. Here is the proof 2602:306:C518:62C0:1E75:8FF:FEBB:2125 (talk) 00:47, 18 July 2012 (UTC) Also φαρμακον is a pharma word and translates out as medicine. 2602:306:C518:62C0:1E75:8FF:FEBB:2125 (talk) 00:48, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

The word medicine means both the science of healing and a drug; this article covers the former topic. Materialscientist (talk) 01:05, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Material Scientist! Of course this so called "science of healing" utilizes drugs or pharmaceuticals. I have a question for you. What do you know about the use of Petro chemicals in the production of pharmaceuticals and can you point me to wikipedia articles on this subject? I have noticed that pharmaceutical articles on Wikipedia conspicuously lack any information on how these various drugs are synthesized. 2602:306:C518:62C0:F4B0:8B17:484D:B943 (talk) 04:17, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Material Scientist.... Please what do you know about how pharmaceuticals are synthesized all the way down to the basic root chemicals? Especially pharmaceuticals used by psychiatrists? 2602:306:C518:62C0:1C66:AFF5:5F43:10F3 (talk) 02:28, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Alternative medicine article discussion to restore MEDRS and NPOV content and sources such as Annals of New York Academy of Sciences and Journal of Academic Medicine

A discussion to restore the first 14 sources of this version, including Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, Journal of Academic Medicine, etc., to the Alternative medicine article is now going on here. ParkSehJik (talk) 02:57, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Request for new list

We have a List of diseases and a List of disorders, so I suggest that we also have (and this could be mentioned in the "See also" section a "List of medicines". ACEOREVIVED (talk) 11:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Already exists: List of drugs --WS (talk) 11:50, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Adherence to clinical guidelines

I added a mention of evidence-based medicine to the Clinical practice section but I'm kind of on the lookout for a good, recent article on how well doctors in the developed world (probably U.S. would be a good enough example) are adhering to their clinical guidelines. There are a few good articles from a ways back, but I can't find recent updates. For example, from Only One Third of Tehran's Physicians are Familiar with ‘Evidence-Based Clinical Guidelines’ (2013), there are several articles but they are all about 10 years old:

• Schuster MA, McGlynn EA, Brook RH. How good is the quality of health care in the United States? Milbank Q. 1998:517–63. [PMC free article] [PubMed]
• Grol R. Successes and failures in the implementation of evidence-based guidelines for clinical practice. Med Care. 2001;39:II46–54. [PubMed]
• Cabana MD, Rand CS, Powe NR, Wu AW, Wilson MH, Abboud PA, et al. Why don’t physicians follow clinical practice guidelines. A framework for improvement? JAMA. 1999;282:1458–65. [PubMed]
• Woolf SH. Practice guidelines, a new reality in medicine: II. Methods of developing guidelines. Arch Intern Med. 1992;152:946–52. [PubMed]
• Lomas J. Making clinical policy explicit: Legislative policy making and lessons for developing practice guidelines. Int J Technol Assess Health Care. 1993;9:11–25. [PubMed]
• Grimshaw JM, Thomas RE, MacLennan G, Fraser C, Ramsay CR, Vale L, et al. Effectiveness and efficiency of guideline dissemination and implementation strategies. Health Technol Assess. 2004;8:1–72. [PubMed]

I imagine a more recent article may also discuss the trend of insurance companies "managing" (or micromanaging, depending on who you talk to) procedures by refusing to pay (see e.g. Curing the prior authorization headache). II | (t - c) 12:58, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem

This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Diannaa (talk) 03:28, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Allopathy as an alternative name for this concept

Previously it was casually proposed to include the term "allopathic medicine" as one of the alternative names for this article. The names currently are "Medicine (also called conventional, scientific, or mainstream medicine...)", and I also wonder if "allopathic medicine" should be added to this list.

I have heard people in India use this term, and at least in some places I feel like lots of people use this term in a positive way to mean "Western medicine" or everything the article describes. I do not have sources to confirm the widespread use of this term, but I wanted to comment that perhaps the use of this term is widespread and worth including. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:15, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Lysergic acid diethylamide

If we could have some eyes on the title article, there are some disagreements regarding WP:MEDRS. Many thanks! Formerly 98 (talk) 02:13, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

Terminology

I don't quite understand the differences between "Medical Sciences" (redirected here) and "Health Sciences". Is that the prior one is a branch of the latter?

The description at health sciences would seem to say that medicine is a branch of health sciences, although that page also says that surgery and anesthesiology are separate branches from medicine, while I think they are commonly considered part of (allopathic) medicine. I don't feel strongly either way about this. Medicine is certainly big enough that it can stand on its own. BakerStMD 12:23, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

I see. So, all of these health-related disciplines, like nursing, rehabilitation care, public health, etc alongside the "original" medicine (or medical sciences), should belong to health (healthcare) sciences? Few institutions here separate health (including nursing and physiotherapy courses) form medical sciences (which contain medical lab. sciences) and I just got into a muddle. I think these terms should be used more accurately or "scientifically". But what about biomedicine? On the applied sciences page, it's stated as a separate branch from medical sciences (medicine). The info. seems contradictory and my brain now is further overloaded! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.136.68.165 (talk) 06:51, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

You've run up against the imprecision of natural language—the fact that particular terms overlap in semantic fields. It is true that the health sciences are often construed as semantically broader than medical science, just as health care is usually construed as semantically broader than medicine (because it includes nursing, physical therapy, and allied health fields, and even simply ADL help from a caregiver). But regarding health science(s) and medical science, because people might resist limiting the latter, it's not an iron-clad formula—people would tend to resist a statement like "nursing science is not medical science" or "medical science does not include any nursing science". The terms bioscience(s) and life science(s) are just about obligately synonymous with each other, but they don't overlap completely with health science(s) or medical science, because biology studies all life (not just humans) and includes basic science (not just applied science applied to health and health care). Then again, though, health science(s) and medical science don't exclude basic science—much of the basic science that happens in genetics, epigenetics, and genomics could not be excluded from health science without people tending to resist that exclusion. Which reflects the fact that although it's pure science now, people have their eye on the number-1 obvious application that awaits it. By the way, the imprecision of natural language makes things like this and this challenging. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:49, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Why does lead say acupuncture is in "contrast" to quackery?

The last two sentences in the lead say that acupuncture is "contrasted" with quackery -

"For example, evidence on the effectiveness of acupuncture is "variable and inconsistent" for any condition,[6] but is generally safe when done by an appropriately trained practitioner.[7] In contrast, medicine outside the bounds of safety and efficacy is termed quackery."

Acupunture is based on the false belief that disease is caused by a blockage of the flow of blood and of a supernatural energy flowing through the body (qi, a type of "energy" purportedly undetected by physics), a false belief that the blockage of blood flow or supernatural energy flow can be healed by insertion of needles at specific acupuncture points (the location of the points has no correlation with the circulatory system and supernatural energies do not exist), a false diagnostic criteria for choosing the acupuncture points (the acupuncture points to choose are determined by examining the color and texture of regions of the tongue, in the false belief that the regions are connected to organs in the body, and that the color and texture of the regions correspond to diseased-or-not conditions of those organs), a false belief that acupuncture points to choose from, for insertion of needles, correspond to anything in physical reality (the location of the acupuncture points is based on numerology and astrology; there are 7 vertical acupuncture meridian lines on the body for the "7 rivers in the Empire", and 365 acupuncture points on those meridians for the number of days in a year).

So acupuncture is by necessity outside the bounds of "efficacy", because it is based on a false theory, false diagnostic criteria, and imaginary locations on the body. Any of the purported "variable" evidence for effectiveness of acupuncture, when tested against a placebo of insertion of needles at locations near, but not at the acupuncture points, by necessity arises from a design flaw in the experiment, or is an expected random false positive.

So why is acupuncture cited as a practice that is in "contrast" to quackery? FloraWilde (talk) 10:53, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the lede mentions acupuncture at all, but the description is a fair one. The argument about design flaws can go either way - that studies finding no difference between sham and verum did not adhere to STRICTA or CONSORT guidelines. Also, acupuncture is a modality, and that modality is used in conjunction with heterogenous theories. TCM acupuncture does emphasize the relationship of points, meridians, qi movement, etc., but that is not the only approach to using acupuncture, traditional or otherwise. Needling with filiform needles for the treatment of pain and nausea has some significant support in the literature, but not enough in contrast to sham or non-traditional point location for definitive statements about efficacy. Therefore, the article is accurate in depicting the current state of acupuncture research as "variable and inconsistent". Herbxue (talk) 04:34, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

15 years ago I would have wondered why any alt med should be in the lede of the medicine article. But these days, the casual Wiki reader likely thinks alt med is medicine. It is now in every grocery store, strip mall, and even in once-prestigious universities. "Needling" is not "acupuncture", unless it is done with the theory of acupunture.

It is not possible to do sham acupuncture by needling at points other than the 365 acupuncture points, because acupuncture points do not correspond to anything in reality. Two acupuncturists will locate the "same" acupuncture point at different (but maybe close) locations on the body.

Finding that needling at one point, out of 365, had efficacy for one (vaguely quantifiable) malady, even if the efficacy were significant, would at best that 1/365 of acupuncture is not quackery. And this pain relief is only one among thousands of maladies acupuncture claims to treat. So only 1/(365 x thousands) of acupuncture is not quackery. Having an incredibly miniscule percent of treatment that is not quackery like this does not "contrast" with quackery. In ayurvedic medicine, they set bones, which has efficacy. But ayurvedic medicine is not thereby "contrasted" with quackery. FloraWilde (talk) 05:19, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I think your characterization of acupuncture practice, research, and point location is greatly over-simplified. The article here does a good job of referring to acupuncture as "pre-scientific" and "traditional", which contrasts it with contemporary conventional medicine. Herbxue (talk) 16:21, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Original research additions

Evropariver (talk · contribs) is making stuff up and adding it to the article, as he did here [7]. Aristotle actually never studied in Egypt, this is totally made up. I removed this addition. Athenean (talk) 08:32, 14 July 2015 (UTC)

Pain Killers

Whilst in Spain, I was hospitalized & prescribed dexketoprofeno cinfa 25mg 3/day. Are there any UK prescribed pain killers that should not be taken with this medicine?Oldbony (talk) 14:30, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

Nothing about bioethics in the article

RippleSax (talk) 01:28, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Criticism seems anemic - neutered.

The criticism section seems anemic - neutered. Why no mention of modern medicine's overspending on marketing vs R&D? Of the payola PHRMA sends to the vast majority of AMA (and related) doctors? Of over-prescription? Of toxic drugs? Of the lack of cures? Vaccines containing mercury (Hg)? All of that (which is only the tip of the iceberg) makes up our fully-accredited, utterly-regulated modern medicine (which concerns hundreds of millions of people and actually affects almost as many), so it's kinda funny to read this article after reading the article on quackwatch (which concerns almost nobody and actually affects even fewer) - both articles are lacking in similar but opposite ways concerning criticism. (Both in favor of PHRMA - which owns modern medicine so far as it is applied in the USA.) Looks comically like bias to me as a reader, but maybe it's just a lack of editors and research for this page due to the fact that not many care about modern medicine? Maybe some historical reason specific to Wikipedia? Some high-level links illustrating the issues I mentioned:

• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080105140107.htm
• http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/marketing-and-advertising-of-pharmaceuticals.aspx
• https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov - related "sunlight" project
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=overprescription

Thanks. The article is in favor of expensive pharmaceutical drugs and not giving any credence to the power that an organic fruit, veggie, a patient going for a walk in the sun/fresh air, natural cures, etc. It does seem that the article is basically promoting the more expensive medical treatments without regard for less expensive alternatives. Wikipedia should do more to be a portal for balanced information not one-sided medical product marketing to unsuspecting public. --172.58.153.230 (talk) 11:33, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Out of time now, but that should be adequate fodder to get someone started. Mccabem (talk) 22:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure it's true that the section could be expanded. For example, I just skimmed over it and didn't see any linked mention of conflict of interest. So no doubt it could be improved. But I think one of the factors involved is a legitimate threshold against antiscience distortion. As for mercury in vaccines, the NPOV treatment of that topic (as covered also in articles such as vaccine controversies and MMR vaccine controversy) is that the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe and effective is much, much more reliable and reproducible and statistically verifiable than any pseudoscience or conspiracy theories that anti-vaxxers such as Wakefield or McCarthy have peddled. That is, just because scientism has produced some distortions of its own (such as scientists in the 1950s saying "I smoke Chesterfields because they're on lighter tar" or "spray some more DDT on that orchard" or "take some thalidomide to calm your nerves during pregnancy") doesn't mean that we should instead embrace pseudoscience or antiscience as "improvements" over science. Science is self-correcting over decades, however slowly and painfully; pseudoscience and antiscience aren't. Quercus solaris (talk) 00:05, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

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classification and naming convention

Most diseases and classifications of current biology have origins in christianity and or the bible and may be used by government to psychologically manipulate to confirm superstitions/belief systems — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.97.229.168 (talk) 23:10, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Emergency medicine

I would consider Emergency medicine an interdisciplinary field. In Germany for example, emergency medicine does not exist as an own specialty, but as an additional qualification, which any physician or surgeon can achieve. Same in Austria AFAIK. It combines knowledge traumatology, cardiology and neurology and also includes some other special fields. In Germany, it is usually anaesthesiologists doing the emergency doctor's services in ambulance crews, but in more rural areas you may also find internists or even GPs. Anyways, what I want to say is: I want to move "Emergency medicine" down to "interdisciplinary fields". What do you guys think? -ImmernochEkelAlfred(Spam me! (or send me serious messages, whatever you like)) 20:32, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Dubious

There's a note about Sushruta's knowledge of surgery being dubious. Try looking at the Sushruta Samhita. :) There are diagrams of more than 120 surgical instruments. Back in those days, people figured it out because of war. They also figured out natural anesthesias and how to prep an area for surgery — removing arrows, healing war wounds, accidents, whatever. Perhaps moderns consider it crude by todays standards — that would be how moderns call it. But people were able to figure out things in ancient times — out of necessity. Even modern european medicine — a few centuries ago — was in some sense born out of studies of ancient medicines. Look into the history of medicine if you're doubtful. Then again, I have see no one yet do a history of medicine so it will be difficult to find but the info is out there.

Curious about the British pronunciation.

It might just be me, but all of the doctors and surgeons I have known haven't or rarely called medicine med-cine. If it was so uncommon, then shouldn't it be changed. Qaei ☎ 12:48, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Cambridge Dictionary confirms it's pronounced med-cine in UK English. Brandmeister^talk 14:41, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131201231218/http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/MJM/issues/v08n01/crossroads/hong.pdf to http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/MJM/issues/v08n01/crossroads/hong.pdf
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20111118132902/http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/eccmid16/abstract.asp?id=50854 to http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/eccmid16/abstract.asp?id=50854

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External links modified (January 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Medicine. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20041130161059/http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~fisher/hst372/readings/tschanz.html to http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~fisher/hst372/readings/tschanz.html

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Definition

The current definition, referring especially to the link "disease" doesn't include the fields of medicine like surgery. --SchönbachKulturdenkmäler (talk) 19:01, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Medical doctors never important?

I do not find any medical doctors with WikiProject saying higher than importance=low. Pasteur is not important to medicine? Lister is not important to medicine? --Dthomsen8 (talk) 03:26, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

This is false information.

This is not true. "As examples, the Supreme Court of India and Indian Medical Association regard traditional medicine practices, such as Ayurveda and Siddha medicine, as quackery.". Propaganda does not belong in an encyclopedia. Was this Taken out of context for malicious reasons? --154.5.24.90 (talk) 19:31, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Traditional medicine

"Traditional medicine" isn't medicine at all, and doesn't belong on medical pages of an encyclopedia except as a note saying to look under society & culture. It's called "traditional" because tradition is the only reason any of its ideas persist - i.e. it wouldn't carry the name "traditional" if it worked.

It isn't analogous to folk music (a legitimate but different form of music); it's analogous to folk legal advice - false information given by people who don't know what they're talking about. "Traditional medicine" is a legitimate topic in history or in cultural studies, but it isn't legitimate to give it any space here, except to have a brief placeholder note explaining that it doesn't belong. TooManyFingers

(talk) 17:11, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

TooManyFingers - Agree that the section should be more succinct. Why don't you go ahead with an edit? --Zefr (talk) 18:35, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't believe succinctness is the point; I also don't believe that I can edit the section effectively enough. It's a case of "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence", but I don't have confidence in my own ability to defend such a move (i.e. not quite but almost deleting that entire section, leaving only a dismissive comment). TooManyFingers (talk) 07:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Propaganda? "Then why don't you just remove the entire section on "History". --154.5.24.90 (talk) 19:42, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

Compelling evidence dictates that title of Science should be removed from medicine

Science (noun) is a fact of nature. Facts are verifiable. If your fact is not verifiable, then you never had a fact to begin with.

There is no fundamental theory for life (yet). Medicine is hinged on statistics and statistics fail verification.

https://academic.oup.com/bjps/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/bjps/axy051/5071906

A Doctor is still a scholar. He can still execute the scientific method on a patient. He still does science (verb). But medicine is not a Science (noun). Not verifiable (yet).

Even the Royal Statistical Society leaves statistical interpretation outside of Science.

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2018.01113.x

Aliis exterendum

The Royal Society restrains the premise that Philosophy of Science uses to justify statistics with Nullius in verba. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wuzamarine (talk • contribs) 17:20, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Wuzamarine (talk • contribs) 02:46, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Articles must be based on reliable sources, not Wikipedia. The definition of science is large, but maybe useful would be scientific method and philosophy of science. Wikipedia talk pages are not a forum for general discussion though, the science reference desk may be more appropriate. Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 23:39, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2018 and 17 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mavluda.alamova96.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Traditional Medicine

Including it as a separate section appears to have some WP:COATRACK issues, as well as some WP:POV issues by indicating that it is part of "the science and practice of the diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and prevention of disease". I believe it would be appropriate to remove it, and instead allow the reader to follow the links to traditional medicine if they wish to learn more about it. BilledMammal (talk) 05:03, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

"Medicaments"?

In the "You may be looking for" at the beginning, the description for "Medication" is "Medicaments". What's a medicament? Is that really the most useful description? סשס Grimmchild. He/him, probably 10:01, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Since medicaments is a synonym for the pharmaceutical version of the word medicine and medicaments at the top links to the Medication article, I think it belongs as a way to distinguish that it's talking about that specific use of the word medicine while being close in spelling. Though pharmaceutical drug would work too and perhaps might be clearer as personally I haven't ever heard medicaments used in everyday conversation. Lalaithan (talk) 21:28, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Research Process and Methodology - SP23 - Sect 201 - Thu

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2023 and 5 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yaruduan (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Yaruduan (talk) 19:24, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Naclepii

Sorry, вие си знаете какво значи Наклепий, той още е тук в статията, най-вече защото, стипендиите за медицина, отиват или за онези, които не разбират полето на медицината or to those who are not jewish, but should be clueless about anything in medicine, or those who gave promises against jewish people like here in Bulgaria with Mengele, medicine is "practiced by those who gave promises against jewish people in one way or another". Politeditor (talk) 13:25, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

@Politeditor: What on earth are you trying to say? That is a nonsensical paragraph of half Bulgarian-half English, with maybe some anti-Jewish ranting or maybe pro-Jewish ranting, I can't really tell for sure. Can I suggest you just stop right now before you get a block? Your other edits have pushed you to within an Ångstrom of a block. Mako001 (C)  (T)  🇺🇦 13:31, 4 May 2023 (UTC)