ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the use of medicines not only from the viewpoint of official medicine, but also from the points of view of different groups of medicine users. Medicines cure illness much less commonly than many people believe, if cure is defined as the restoration of health. Medicines are used in the prevention of many conditions, and they can aid diagnosis, apart from their well-recognised roles of curing and alleviating disease, and of relieving symptoms. There are three main types of such maintenance therapy: the replacement of some essential substance that the body lacks, the takeover by drugs of a failing physiological control system, and the suppression of disease activity. The patient knows better than anyone else whether and to what extent the treatment relieves symptoms and is likely to know how inconvenient the treatment is. It is therefore appropriate for the patient to control symptomatic treatment if this can be managed. Most drugs used in self-medication are symptomatic remedies.
