ABSTRACT
The human body has a mechanism to adjust itself to minor variations in the internal as well as external environment. Perspiration in hot weather, shivering in the cold, increased respiration during physical exercise, excretion of redundant nutrients, replacement of lost blood after hemorrhage, and decrease in the diameter of the pupil in bright light are examples of this mechanism. This is a continuous process that goes on all the time in our body and is referred to as homeostasis. Health could be defined as the dynamic balance of body, mind, and soul when homeostasis is going on perfectly well. The greater the capacity to maintain internal equilibrium, the better the health. Perhaps human efficiency is optimal in this condition. Sometimes infections, injury, nutritional imbalances, stress, and such other aberration become too much for this process to handle, and external help is needed. Medicine can be defined as the intervention that tries to put the system back on track when aberrations occur. This can be broadened to include steps that strengthen the process of homeostasis and steps that modify or ameliorate the adverse sequels occurring in some cases.
