Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine

PREVENTIVE MEDICINE
The medical discipline of preventive medicine covers the gamut of measures, individual and societal, that can reduce
the occurrence of illness and injury. Physicians who practice in preventive medicine may be infectious disease specialists,
community health specialists, and occupational health specialists. Preventive medicine is also a mainstay of most
other medical specialties, notably family practice, internal medicine, and pediatrics. The research field of epidemiology
studies trends in and risks for illness and injury and explores methods for reducing health risks. Epidemiologists and
preventive medicine practitioners work closely together.
This section, “Preventive Medicine,” presents an
overview discussion of preventive medicine concepts
and entries about preventive health measures
and the public health dimensions of illness
and injury. The entries in this section focus on the
larger picture of how illness and injury affect the
health and well-being of communities and populations.
Entries in other sections of The Facts On
File Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine provide
detailed content about the causes, symptoms,
diagnosis, treatment, and outlook for specific
infections and diseases. Cross-references link the
entries to one another.
Traditions in Preventive Medicine History
Early cultures and medical systems had their
unique variations on preventing illness and INFEC-
TION. There is some evidence of guidelines for sanitation
and public health practices in ancient
Macedonia, and the ruins of ancient Rome’s intricate
aqueducts and sewage canals remain today.
But for the most part the premise of public health
is relatively modern, emerging after a flurry of scientific
discoveries in the 19th century that
revealed the pathogenesis (origin and progression)
of infection and disease. Key to these discoveries
were the observations of physicians such as
Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, who was the first to
make the connection that doctors carried the
infection of childbirth FEVER from one patient to
another through blood on their hands and clothing,
and the experiments of scientists such as
Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, and Robert Koch,
whose discoveries proved the existence of
microbes and the value of antisepsis in preventing
the spread of infection. Their work further led to
the development of antibiotics and vaccines.
These three factors—antisepsis, antibiotics, and
vaccines––forever changed the perceptions and
patterns of disease throughout the world and are
among the most significant breakthroughs in
medical history. In less than half a century these
discoveries dramatically reduced the occurrence
and severity of many diseases that had for millennia
been the leading causes of death: tetanus,
ANTHRAX, SMALLPOX, CHOLERA, TYPHOID FEVER, DIPH-
THERIA, PERTUSSIS, POLIOMYELITIS, SYPHILIS, bacterial
PNEUMONIA, bacterial wound infections, INFLUENZA,
and TUBERCULOSIS. Though death due to infection
after CHILDBIRTH is rare in the United States today,
until the early 20th century childbirth fever
(puerperal fever) was a leading cause of death
among women of childbearing age. From 1900 to
1999, maternal death in childbirth declined 99
percent in the United States.
EFFECTS OF VACCINATION
• eradication of SMALLPOX in the United States in 1967 and
worldwide in 1977
• near eradication of MEASLES in the United States in 1998
• near eradication of POLIOMYELITIS in the United States in
2000
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