Vocabulary Lesson:

Mortality Rate: the ratio of deaths to total population in a specific community over a specific period of time

For example: The urban death rate for New York, in 1840, was 30.2/1000; in 1889 it had dropped to 25.7; in 1914, to 18.9.

Morbidity rate: a similar ratio for illness

Lifespan: the average number of years an individual, born in a certain era, can expect to live.

Epidemiology: study of the changing patterns of disease in a population

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is responsible for collecting epidemiological information about the United States.

Diseases can be either epidemic (not always present in a population, like the flu) or endemic (always with us,simple colds)

Pathology: study of the changes in body tissues attributable to disease

Etiology: the cause of a disease

Nosology: a medical culture's way of classifying diseases, like a taxonomy of disease

Diagnosis: labeling symptoms or giving a name to a disease

Prognosis: the course of a disease and the likely outcome

Therapeutics: treatment strategies

Amramentarium: the equipment of a practitioner (books, instruments, medicine, etc.)

The doctor who treats you at the HMO practices clinical medicine; he/she is a clinician.

Some physicians are lab scientists.

The distinction is often referred to as bench v. bedside practice.

From Kaplan, characteristics of health:

Health is more than the absence of disease

Health is relative--to the individual and the society

Measures of health are found in our social values