Medicine is the science and practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. 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.
Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, disorder and injury in non-human animals. The scope of veterinary medicine is wide, covering all animal species, both domesticated and wild, with a wide range of conditions which can affect different species.
Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Speech to the Second National Convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights – Chicago, March 25, 1966, as quoted in "America's Forgotten Civil Right - Healthcare" by the the Forbes.com Dan Munro on August 28, 2013 See also: Tracking Down Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Words on Health Care by The Huffington Post's Amanda Moore on August 18, 2013.
Learn'd he was in medic'nal lore,
For by his side a pouch he wore,
Replete with strange hermetic powder
That wounds nine miles point-blank would solder.
Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto II, line 223.
This is the way that physicians mend or end us,
Secundum artem: but although we sneer
In health—when ill, we call them to attend us,
Without the least propensity to jeer.
Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto X, Stanza 42.