“Today, there is no better nation in which to become sick than the United States.” —Doug Bandow “Yes, as we’re often told, American medicine is the best in the world. . . . But good as it is, it still could be a lot...

In 1896 Antoine Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, discovered radioactivity in uranium when he was investigating fluorescent crystals for x rays. He shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 with...

The twentieth century was a period of rapid scientific development and unprecedented progress in the biomedical sciences. During the first half of the twentieth century, advances in science—especially in microbiology, immunology, biochemistry,...

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was considerable debate among physicians about the appropriate philosophical basis for their art. The humoral theory of Galen and Avicenna remained influential while the iatrochemists advocated a more...

During the twentieth century, medical theory and practice underwent more profound changes than in all of the years since the time of Hippocrates (460?-377? B.C.). Since World War II, changes in science and society have transformed the theoretical,...

Since the 1950s, women's preventative medicine and health care have greatly improved in the developed world, particularly through the availability of new diagnostic techniques. The use of Pap tests and mammography has become standard methods...

Despite the exciting advances that took place in science and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was only in the nineteenth century that medicine itself became scientific. This was largely the result of the integration of the...

Outer space has a very different environment from that of Earth. The atmosphere, radiation, and gravity levels are so drastically varied that several adjustments are made to protect astronauts from the deadly effects of the space environment on the...

Traditionally, space medicine has tackled medical problems associated with the space environment. Increasingly, however, space medicine also encompasses research conducted aboard space stations and vehicles. Medical research conducted in microgravity...

Treatment and care to combat disease or alleviate pain or injury. Its tools include drugs, surgery, radiation therapy, mechanical devices, diet, and psychiatry. Treatment may be active, to cure a disease (requiring no further treatment after recovery),...

A medicine cannot stay in the bottle and be effective. (Yoruban) An expensive physic always does good, if not to the patient at least to the apothecary. (German) He who lives by medical treatment lives a wretched existence. (Roman) Medicine sometimes...

Medicine is the science and "art" of maintaining and/or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of patients. The term is derived from the Latin ars medicina meaning the art of healing.[1][2] The modern practice of medicine...