ABSTRACT
Without treatment, medicine would be limited to contemplation. Identifying a patient’s health problem must lead to prevention, to cure, or if the causes of disease are unknown, to the alleviation of suffering. Ultimately, further research may elucidate causes and conditions, and allow for the control of disease and the maintenance of health. Some of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘six honest serving men’ have been discussed in Chapters 5 and 6 (‘What‘), 7 (‘Who’, ‘When’, ‘Where’), and 8 (‘Why’). The next step is understanding the validity of these questions by transforming conclusions derived from observations into a deliberate and controlled action (the essence of experimental research), be it in laboratories, drug trials, surgical procedures in clinical settings or field trials of health programs in community medicine. ‘Really?’, as in ‘Does it really work?’, is an important ‘seventh honest man’ in the understanding of human biology and pathology.
