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Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient and managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment or palliation of their injury or disease. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies biomedical sciences, biomedical research, genetics, and medical technology to diagnose, treat, and prevent injury and disease, typically through pharmaceuticals or surgery, but also through therapies as diverse as psychotherapy, external splints and traction, medical devices, biologics, and ionizing radiation, amongst others.

Medicine has been practiced since prehistoric times, during most of which it was an art (an area of skill and knowledge) frequently having connections to the religious and philosophical beliefs of local culture. For example, a medicine man would apply herbs and say prayers for healing, or an ancient philosopher and physician would apply bloodletting according to the theories of humorism. In recent centuries, since the advent of modern science, most medicine has become a combination of art and science (both basic and applied, under the umbrella of medical science). While stitching technique for sutures is an art learned through practice, the knowledge of what happens at the cellular and molecular level in the tissues being stitched arises through science.

Prescientific forms of medicine are now known as traditional medicine or folk medicine, which remains commonly used in the absence of scientific medicine, and are thus called alternative medicine. Alternative treatments outside of scientific medicine having safety and efficacy concerns are termed quackery. (Full article...)

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The heart is a muscular organ in most animals, which pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. Blood provides the body with oxygen and nutrients, as well as assists in the removal of metabolic wastes. In humans, the heart is located between the lungs, in the middle compartment of the chest. In humans, other mammals, and birds, the heart is divided into four chambers: upper left and right atria; and lower left and right ventricles. The heart pumps blood with a rhythm determined by a group of pacemaking cells in the sinoatrial node. These generate a current that causes contraction of the heart, traveling through the atrioventricular node and along the conduction system of the heart. The heart receives blood low in oxygen from the systemic circulation, which enters the right atrium from the superior and inferior venae cavae and passes to the right ventricle. From here it is pumped into the pulmonary circulation, through the lungs where it receives oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide. Oxygenated blood then returns to the left atrium, passes through the left ventricle and is pumped out through the aorta to the systemic circulation−where the oxygen is used and metabolized to carbon dioxide. The heart beats at a resting rate close to 72 beats per minute. (More...)

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Human distal femur shot with a 510-grain lead Minié ball fired from a .58 caliber Springfield Model 1862 rifle.

Photo credit: National Institutes of Health, Health & Human Services

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Get involved by joining WikiProject Medicine. We discuss collaborations and all manner of issues on our talk page.

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...the general adaptation syndrome was discovered almost accidentally by Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye? He was searching for new hormones by injecting mice with organ homogenates, but found they all displayed an acute stress reaction.

...the keratolytic effects of over-the-counter salicylic acid are used to treat viral warts?
...in 1906, Frederick Hopkins suggested the existence of vitamins and suggests that a lack of vitamins causes scurvy and rickets? He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1929, and also discovered the amino acid tryptophan in 1901.

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The following are images from various Medicine-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Louis Pasteur experimenting on bacteria, c. 1870
Image 2The Hippocratic Corpus
A collection of early medical works may be associated with Hippocrates
Image 3Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, c. 1850–58. The asylum population in England and Wales rose from 1,027 in 1827 to 74,004 in 1900.
Image 4Assorted dried plant and animal parts used in traditional Chinese medicines, clockwise from top left corner: dried Lingzhi (lit. "spirit mushrooms"), ginseng, Luo Han Guo, turtle shell underbelly (plastron), and dried curled snakes
Image 5The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, written in the 17th century BC, contains the earliest recorded reference to the brain. New York Academy of Medicine.
Image 618th-century medical remedies collected by a British Gentry family
Image 7American combat surgery during the Pacific War, 1943. Major wars showed the need for effective hygiene and medical treatment.
Image 8Mandrake (written 'ΜΑΝΔΡΑΓΟΡΑ' in Greek capitals). Naples Dioscurides, 7th century
Image 9The plinthios brochos as described by Greek physician Heraklas, a sling for binding a fractured jaw. These writings were preserved in one of Oribasius' collections.
Image 10Smallpox vaccination in Niger, 1969. A decade later, this was the first infectious disease to be eradicated.
Image 11A cochlear implant is a common kind of neural prosthesis, a device replacing part of the human nervous system.
Image 12The Quaker-run York Retreat, founded in 1796, gained international prominence as a centre for moral treatment and a model of asylum reform following the publication of Samuel Tuke's Description of the Retreat (1813).
Image 13Replica of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope of the 1670s
Image 14Ayurvedic herbal medicines
Image 15The oldest Polish Collegium Medicum at Jagiellonian University founded in 1364
Image 16Curandera performing a limpieza in Cuenca, Ecuador
Image 17Depiction of smallpox in Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún's history of the conquest of Mexico, Book XII of the Florentine Codex, from the defeated Aztecs' point of view
Image 18Florence Nightingale triggered the professionalization of nursing. Photograph c. 1860
Image 19Medical recipe concerning poisoning. Terracotta tablet, from Nippur, Iraq, 18th century BCE. Ancient Orient Museum, Istanbul
Image 20Guy's Hospital in 1820
Image 21Most countries have seen a tremendous increase in life expectancy since 1945. However, in southern Africa, the HIV epidemic beginning around 1990 has eroded national health.
Image 22Sometimes traditional medicines include parts of endangered species, such as the slow loris in Southeast Asia.
Image 23Andreas Vesalius's 1543 De humani corporis fabrica contained intricately detailed drawings of human dissections, often in allegorical poses.
Image 24Mexico City epidemic of 1737, with elites calling on the Virgin of Guadalupe
Image 25American Civil War hospital at Gettysburg, 1863
Image 26Botánicas such as this one in Jamaica Plain, Boston, cater to the Latino community and sell folk medicine alongside statues of saints, candles decorated with prayers, lucky bamboo, and other items.
Image 27Traditional medicine in a market in Antananarivo, Madagascar
Image 28"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale.
Image 29Monumental stone relief of a fish-garbed figure from the Temple of Ninurta in the Assyrian city of Kalhu, believed by some experts to be a representation of an āšipu, or exorcist-priest, who functioned as a kind of healer and primitive doctor

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