The Value of Medicine

Medicine is compounded of many things, so many that it can mean almost anything to anyone. It has been seen to grow from magic and the priesthood through the centuries until the days of modern science. On the way it received a large injection of the Christian ethic, and though it may no longer be overtly Christian the humanitarian ideal remains. At all times the development of medicine has been dependent upon the climate of opinion of the society within which it was practised. In particular it has always needed monetary support, and has thus been dependent upon local prosperity, and later on national commercial success. The evidence is clear that it has never been of primary importance to the earlier development of Man as a species, nor even to nations. They grew and became successful and increased their populations and economic and military power without any significant contribution from medicine. Medicine is only called into being on a large scale when the economic base of society is secure. This, of course, refers to curative medicine mainly. Preventive medicine has had rather large successes in helping the species, but engineers and technologists were at least as important in this, and a case can be made that the public works were well in hand and progressing before medicine annexed them to itself, especially through medical officers of local health authorities. It was only when they were able to explain the rationale of pure water supply, sewage disposal, clean food handling and so forth, after the rise of bacteriology, that preventive medicine became part of medicine at all.