Details about Goldman-Cecil Medicine 26th edition
Goldman-Cecil Medicine 26th edition PDF free download – Medicine is a profession that incorporates science and the scientific method with the art of being a physician. The art of tending to the sick is as old as humanity itself. Even in modern times, the art of caring and comforting, guided by millennia of common sense as well as a more recent, systematic approach to medical ethics (Chapter 2), remains the cornerstone of medicine. Without these humanistic qualities, the application of the modern science of medicine is suboptimal, ineffective, or even detrimental. The caregivers of ancient times and premodern cultures tried a variety of interventions to help the afflicted. Some of their potions contained what are now known to be active ingredients that form the basis for proven medications (Chapter 26). Others (Chapter 34) have persisted into the present era despite a lack of convincing evidence. Modern medicine should not dismiss the possibility that these unproven approaches may be helpful; instead, it should adopt a guiding principle that all interventions, whether traditional or newly developed, can be tested vigorously, with the expectation that any beneficial effects can be explored further to determine their scientific basis. When compared with its long and generally distinguished history of caring and comforting, the scientific basis of medicine is remarkably recent. Other than an understanding of human anatomy and the later description, albeit widely contested at the time, of the normal physiology of the circulatory system, almost all of modern medicine is based on discoveries made within the past 150 years, during which human life expectancy has more than doubled.1 Until the late 19th century, the paucity of medical knowledge was also exemplified best by hospitals and hospital care. Although hospitals provided caring that all but well-to-do people might not be able to obtain elsewhere, there is little if any evidence that hospitals improved health outcomes. The term hospitalism referred not to expertise in hospital care but rather to the aggregate of iatrogenic and nosocomial afflictions that were induced by the hospital stay itself