Preventive Medicine

Although doctors, in the Hippocratic oath, give faith both to goddesses Hygeia (the goddess of health and prevention) and Panacea (goddess of healing), in practice they give a preferential attention to healing. Thousands of years ago the Chinese, appreciating the advantages of disease prevention, did not pay doctors until they would apply profilactic measures efficiently [1]. In the Middle Ages, profilactic measures addressed to collectivities, through vaccination of the population against contagious epidemics (smallpox, cholera, etc.) In modern times, the shift of pathology towards chronic diseases (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes), changes the direction of preventive measures from collective prevention to individual prevention. In 1983, in the US, individual preventive measures were merged with collective preventive measures, in a specialty called “Preventive Medicine and Public Health”[2].
In Romania, preventive communities belong to “Public Health and Health Management”. Individual preventive measures are carried out especially by family physicians and episodically, ambulatory physicians.
In the following we present our observations regarding preventive medicine.[More]