Medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. 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, and for most of this time 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). For example, 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, now known as traditional medicine or folk medicine, remain commonly used in the absence of scientific medicine, and are thus called alternative medicine. Alternative treatments outside of scientific medicine with safety and efficacy concerns are termed quackery.
World Health Organization's Essential Medicine List
Dedicated article: World Health Organization's Essential Medicine List
The WHO EML contains the medications considered to be most effective and safe to meet the most important needs in a health system.
The list is divided into core items and complementary items. The core items are deemed to be the most cost-effective options for key health problems and are usable with little additional health care resources. The complementary items either require additional infrastructure such as specially trained health care providers or diagnostic equipment or have a lower cost–benefit ratio.
The most recent EML (as of 2025) contains 591 drugs and 103 therapeutic equivalents.[1]
Examples
Activated carbon is used to treat poisonings and overdoses following oral ingestion. Tablets or capsules of activated carbon are used in many countries as an over-the-counter drug to treat diarrhea, indigestion, and flatulence. However, activated charcoal shows no effect on intestinal gas and diarrhea, and is, ordinarily, medically ineffective if poisoning resulted from ingestion of corrosive agents, boric acid, petroleum products, and is particularly ineffective against poisonings of strong acids or bases, cyanide, iron, lithium, arsenic, methanol, ethanol or ethylene glycol. Activated carbon will not prevent these chemicals from being absorbed into the human body. Incorrect application (e.g. into the lungs) results in pulmonary aspiration, which can sometimes be fatal if immediate medical treatment is not initiated.
Nitroglycerin has been used for over a century in medicine as a potent vasodilator (dilation of the vascular system) to treat heart conditions. Nitroglycerin has been available in sublingual tablets, sprays, ointments, and patches.
Opium, made from the opium poppy, is another medicine that has been used for over 8,000 years as potent pain relief, anesthesia, and cough suppression. Its derivatives such morphine, codeine, and oxycodone are still pertinent to advanced modern medicine today. [2]
Quinine was the first proper medicine used to treat malaria at least 400 years ago.
Shelf life
A medicine's shelf life is the time that it has before its expiration date, the final day that the manufacturer guarantees the full potency and safety of a medication.[3]
Safety
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted the Shelf Life Extension Program on behalf of the US Department of Defense to study the shelf life of stockpiled military medications. The study concluded that 90% of over 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even for up to 15 years after the expiration date.[3][4]
However, it is difficult for a consumer or health care provider to know which medicine could have an extended shelf life or expiration date, and the FDA advises to never take drugs beyond their expiration date as it is risky with many unknown variables. The use of expired drugs that requiere an absolute effectiveness can be life-threatening. For instance, EpiPen autoinjectors, used in situations like anaphylaxis (a life-threatening allergic reaction, often due to nuts and other foods, insect stings, or medications), are an unstable chemical subject to degradation and there can be a major health threat or death risk related to an expired EpiPen. The FDA requires that epinephrine autoinjector expiration dates ensure that the devices contain at least 90% of the original dose of epinephrine.[3]
List
| Product | Treatment | Shelf life |
|---|---|---|
| Albuterol | Asthma attacks | |
| Antibiotics | Most illnesses caused by bacterial infection | |
| Antihistamines | Most allergies symptoms | |
| Atorvastatin | High cholesterol | |
| Gabapentin | Seizures or nerve pain relieve after shingles (rash caused by viral infection) |
|
| Hydrocodone/Acetaminophen | Severe pain Antitussive (cough suppressant) |
|
| Levothyroxine | Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid gland) | |
| Losarttan | Hypertension (high blood pressure) | |
| Metformin | Type 2 diabetes | 3 years from the date of manufacture.[5] |
| Omeprazole | Heartburn and acid reflux |
See also
- Food
- Technology
- Tools
- Emergency Medicine
- Penicillin
- Aspirin
- Activated charcoal
- Anesthesia
- Medicinal Plants
- Wound Disinfection
References
- ↑ "WHO Model Lists of Essential Medicines". World Health Organization. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
- ↑ https://www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/WNL.92.15_supplement.P4.9-055#:~:text=Results%3A,a%20panacea%20for%20all%20maladies.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Drug Expiration Dates - Are Expired Drugs Still Safe to Take?, 20 July 2022, Drugs.com. Retrieved on 14 January 2023
- ↑ Drug Expiration Dates — Do They Mean Anything?, 29 August 2020, Harvard Health Publishing. Retrived on 14 January 2023
- ↑ METFORMIN NEW ZEALAND DATA SHEET, Medsafe. Retrieved on 14 January 2023.
| This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Medicine, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). | 
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| This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Activated_charcoal, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). |
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| This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Nitroglycerin, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors). |
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