Question

In the article "The House Officer's Changing World," Joseph Hardison states that "comparing medicine then and now is like comparing the horse-and-buggy days of with interplanetary travel."

If you could take the best of the "horse and buggy" days of medicine, and the best of today's world of medicine, what parts of the past and the present would you keep and what parts would you discard?

Answer 1

As per the question

For any diseare to cure there are certain things which is very necessary be it old or new .these are

Approach to the patient

Reaching differential diagnosis and ultimately reaching the provisional diagnosis .

Investigation

Management

So keep there topic in mind I would like to keep following thing from buggy and horse time and modern times of medicine

Approach to patient

It should be from horse and buggy time upto some extent like in making relationship of client with patients , their chief complain but the elaboration of symptoms should be done with today rules because with the advancement of psychology and behavior sciences taking out exact problem with the patient has improved.

Reaching provisional diagnosis : for eliciting sign and symptoms one should rely more on earlier methods of examination. Because it is not developed overnight it took decades to develop . And all those method makes the healthcare provider skillful. Technical error can occur any time so these manual examination technique is of great help.

It leads to provisional diagnosis.

Investigation: For this purpose only moderm day technology is effective because it only exists because it took over earlier primitive technology. It makes the healthcare professional job very easy and also turns out to be useful for determining illnesses.

Management: for this also modern day medication is very effective. Because it is more advanced ,better compliance, better prognosis , improved .

This is the we now curing disease which was incurable in earlier times .Like pox , Tuberculosis earlier people used to die from it but it has an affair on certain dose of drugss for certain period of time . Side effects are coming into picture , drug interaction and complications can easily be find out in today time