Talk:Medicine

Dubious

There's a note about Sushruta's knowledge of surgery being dubious. Try looking at the Sushruta Samhita. :) There are diagrams of more than 120 surgical instruments. Back in those days, people figured it out because of war. They also figured out natural anesthesias and how to prep an area for surgery — removing arrows, healing war wounds, accidents, whatever. Perhaps moderns consider it crude by todays standards — that would be how moderns call it. But people were able to figure out things in ancient times — out of necessity. Even modern european medicine — a few centuries ago — was in some sense born out of studies of ancient medicines. Look into the history of medicine if you're doubtful. Then again, I have see no one yet do a history of medicine so it will be difficult to find but the info is out there.

Neuroscience-related medical specialties

In order to help audience of Wikipedia, especially those outside the medical field, to appreciate that neuroscience/nervous system is a common theme across many seemingly distinct medical specialties, I propose to create a category of 'neuroscience-related medical specialties' - just like how specialties have been grouped together under surgery, internal medicine or diagnostic specialties.

There are numerous sources to support this proposal. See, for instance, the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) (one of the top 5 medical schools in US) Institute of Neurological Sciences: http://www.med.upenn.edu/ins/cnst.html

Quote: 'The nervous system is the only system of the body commonly represented by an undergraduate major, and many medical students come to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine especially interested in Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurosurgery. These, and closely allied specialties, including neuroradiology, neuropathology, ophthalmology, otorhinolaryngology, anesthesiology, and rehabilitation medicine, constitute the clinical neurosciences.'

From this UPenn page, it can also be seen that they have created a 'clinical neuroscience track' at the UPenn medical school 'to train clinical neuroscience specialists who will participate at the forefront of clinical and academic practice, and disease oriented research. The program combines curricular enrichment in the neurosciences, mentoring, special extracurricular activities and research opportunities within the four-year medical school structure.'

Clearly, at least at UPenn, the term 'clinical neuroscience' is not only referring to research endeavours, but also clinical practice and beyond.

By referring these specialties as 'neuroscience-related', I did not imply that a clinician in rehabilitation medicine - for instance - should regard themselves as 'practising neuroscientists'. They certainly should not do so. All I was trying to get across is that there's a common theme across these specialties, namely the nervous system.

If 'neuroscience-related' is too strong a word, one could consider 'nervous system-related' specialties - but that may be too awkward a term.

Other than the above listed specialties, 'addiction medicine' definitely would be a neuroscience-related specialty - as addiction mechanisms are brain-based. See, for instance, <www.camh.net/Research/Areas_of_research/Neuroscience/clinical_neuroscience.html>

'Pain management' is certainly neuroscience-related as well - as pain perception is based in the central nervous system. See, for instance, University of Manchester http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/clinicalneurosciences/research/humanpain/

I think it is self-evident that 'Clinical neurophysiology' is neuroscience-related.

Some other sources supporting that physiatry (i.e. rehabilitation medicine), opthalmology and anesthesiology are neuroscience-related:

Physiatry - Washington University (one of the top 5 medical schools in US) - physiatry residency program is offered through Dept of Neurology <http://neuro.wustl.edu/education/pmrresidency/>

Ophthalmology - see: University College London <http://www.ucl.ac.uk/neuroscience/Page.php?ID=11> Quote: 'At UCL, clinical neuroscience research spans the entire spectrum of neurological, ophthalmic and psychiatric disorders in both children and adults.'

Or: Karolinska Institute Dept of Clinical Neuroscience Research: <http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=36147&l=en>

Anesthesiology - with a major focus on pain control, it is certainly related to neurosciences. See, for instance, 'Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care'

Thanks.Waithought (talk) 23:12, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

While it's reasonable to classify these as a group, they were also perfectly reasonable under the previous way they were classified, and promoting neuroscience as "special" is giving it more weight than warranted. It's an important group, true, but all of the other headings are for "supergroups": it'd be like having a list of vertebrates, invertebrates, and cats. SDY (talk) 01:47, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The current solution is reasonable, but I don't want you (Waithought) to repeat previous edits to the effect that these clinical specialties are somehow umbrellafied by the label "neurosciences". That is simply not the way things are. Universities may choose to bunch academic departments in these fields together, but I think you'd be overstating your case if you said that a psychiatrist would regard herself as a "clinical neuroscientist with an interest in psychiatry" or somesuch. JFW | T@lk 09:52, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Merge from Medical practice

The section Medicine#Clinical practice is much more comprehensive than the entire article of Medical practice, and I don't see why Medical practice can't simply be merged to this article. If Medical practice should be a fork from the section Medicine#Clinical practice, then it should at least be a little bit more synchronized first, so that the bulk of the text is in the forked article. Mikael Häggström (talk) 13:46, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Jesanj (talk) 15:32, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Practice vs Drugs

This gives primary meaning as "the science and art of healing", and Medication as the drugs which are used as medicine. However, Wiktionary [[1]] has #1 as the drugs, #2 as "treatment or cure", #3 as "The study of the cause, diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of disease or illness" and #4 as "The profession of physicians, surgeons and related specialisms; those who practice medicine". So this article has wiktionary's #3 and #4 dealed here, but #1 in a different article. Feels somehow odd. 82.141.119.188 (talk) 22:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, just noticed that "Medication" actually redirects to Pharmaceutical drug. Oh, nice. 82.141.119.188 (talk) 22:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Scope of article

Is this article only about "human medicine" (note: that link redirects here), i.e., the healing of human beings? And is the division between human medicine and veterinary medicine a deliberate editorial decision?

If so, what does this say about the usage of the term "non-human animal" to mean regular animals, i.e., when anyone other than a biologist is talking? --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)