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Four Basic Concepts of Medical Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Caroline Whitbeck
Caroline Whitbeck*
Affiliation:
Institute for the Medical Humanities University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston
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Extract

It might be thought that the basic concept in medical science is that of health. However, as it turns out, medicine has little or nothing to say about health. (This is less true of some of the other health sciences and health professions, notably nursing and public health.) Instead it is diseases, injuries, impairments, and, to a lesser extent, symptoms which are the focus of concern in medicine. It is a generally recognized and frequently bemoaned fact that in this country, contemporary medicine and medical education largely ignore, not only the promotion of health, but even the prevention of disease and injury. (Medical educators are among those most acutely aware of this situation.) Instead, medicine is principally concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of medical crisis.

It is small wonder that in explicating the concept of health as it is found in the theories which inform the practice of medicine, Boorse arrives at a negative notion, viz., health as the absence of disease and injury.

Type
Part VI. Aspects of Rationality
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1978 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1978 , 1978 , pp. 210 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © 1978 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I am indebted to Joseph Margolis for some very useful criticisms of an earlier draft of this paper.

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