Science Assisted Medicine And The Future Of General Practice And Public Health

Abstract

Our profession has been slow to recognize disease in society as a whole in contrast to its skill in caring for individual sickness. The cost of medical I and surgical treatment has risen from year to year and there is an increasing demand for specialized care with more hospital beds, an indication that the overall health of communities improves slowly, if at all. During the last 100 years social and economic progress alone may be credited with having played a large part in improved mortality rates. Individual doctors have made efforts in the past towards advancing preventive medicine throughout the world, while research in psychiatry and sociology indicates there is need for a new approach with man again regarded by his doctors as a whole human being both in health and disease.