ABSTRACT
Medicine may be defined as the art of preserving or restoring health and treating disease, illness, or physical dysfunction by means of drugs, surgical operations, or manipulations. The history of medicine is the history of both the changing concepts of health and disease and the greatly varied social roles and ethical responsibilities of those who seek to preserve or restore health. The former is properly an aspect of the history of science in general and of the biological sciences in particular. The impact of religion on the history of science, in its broadest sense as well as in some of its specific disciplines, is reflected in the history of changing concepts of health and disease. The roles and responsibilities of medical practitioners, while affected by changing scientific concepts, are less features of the history of science than of social, religious, moral, legal, and economic history.
