What is the definition of scientific medicine?

Question

I am supposed to write a research paper for a class at university, and I am researching the rise of scientific medicine, which my professor assigned specific dates to each topic, mine being 1850-1913. However, a significant portion of medical literature contradicts itself on what exactly scientific medicine is. For example, some books claim that modern medicine and scientific medicine are homogenous, while others claim they are not. Some books claim that all medicine, in a sense, is scientific. I searched for the definition of scientific medicine on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and many other ubiquitously utilized search engines, and the only definition I found was as followed: n A term used to describe the form of medicine derived from the Flexnerian Reformation of medical education and the Germ Theory in the early 1900s. However, the aforementioned definition conflicts with the dates I was originally assigned. So, what is the exact definition of scientific medicine and how is it heterogeneous from other forms of medicine? Technically, scientific laws govern all matter; so therefore, all medicine can be considered scientific, despite how inane or ineffective it is. However one could propose and logically argue that previous medicine merely was technology because people knew it either was effective or useless, thus differentiating it from scientific medicine, which explains the physiology on why certain medical practices and drugs are effective and some are not. This information is ambiguous, and I am extremely confused. Can anyone shed some light on the matter please?

Answer 1

Medicine is the art of applying limited knowledge derived from the scientific process to the promotion of health and the healing of human conditions and disorders. This is my definition.



"Scientific Medicine" is an over-reaching concept. Medicine (health care) is based on the knowledge acquired from the scientific process. But, most medical interventions are based on very limited scientific evidence. Thus, health care is the ART of applying limited, scientifically-derived knowledge/evidence to the "care and feeding" of real, individual (not scientifically or statistically average) patients.



Don't really know if this helps you, but the question you are asking is a really good one, and therefore, worth contemplating.



Best wishes and good luck with your project.

Answer 2

This course explores the historical development of cultural beliefs and institutions in Western Europe and the United States during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which led to the establishment of the modern system of medicine. The focus of the course is primarily upon the role of natural science in the transformation of medical theory, medical training, and medical practice. We will explore the factors that enabled academically trained physicians, schooled in the elements of experimental physiology, physiological chemistry, the germ theory of disease, and pharmacologically based chemical therapeutics, to displace other types of healers and emerge by the early twentieth century as the sole providers of health care. In part our focus will be on the professionalization of medicine and the role of scientific knowledge and expertise in the making of the modern physician. No less crucial for our consideration, however, is the creation of the modern patient; a major thesis explored in the course is that the professionalization of medicine required at the same time the medicalization of society. We will examine the transformation of values and beliefs which enabled scientifically trained professional physicians to be invested with cultural authority in matters of sickness and health, and we will examine the ways in which this medical authority was institutionalized in standardized training, evaluation, and licensing, supported by a vast armamentarium of technology, centered in clinics and hospitals. Beginning with the reform of medical institutions during the French Revolution and the concomitant developments of pathological anatomy and the Paris clinical tradition, the course will trace the development of scientific and laboratory medicine throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating with the promised therapeutic revolution to be effected by improved knowledge of biochemistry on the eve of the discovery and commercial development of antibiotics in 1945. Among other topics we will consider are gender in medicine and the development of fields such as medical genetics.

Answer 3

Not bad; I would eliminate the word "physical" though: I think it's too restricting, the way I understand it. Chemical, bio-chemical, bio-social, biological, etc... - rather than enumerating all, just say "theories", "underlying mechanism"