What is preventive medicine? Specifically, what is the specialty of preventive medicine, and how should it best be described? The specialty of preventive medicine is poorly understood, not only by the medical profession and the general public, but even among some of its practitioners. Currently, there is no unifying, vernacular explanation of the specialty of preventive medicine, to its detrime...

Every society has got a body of beliefs. norms and concepts with regard to the nature of disease and its treatment. These are clos ely integrated with the cultural matrix or social organization of the society. According to their own concepts of cause and prevention, the people practise some form of preventive medicine. The character and dynamism of any form of preventive and curative medicine d...

A recent Florida law, Medical Privacy Concerning Firearms, potentially bars physicians from being able to ask patients about firearms ownership unless safety is an immediate concern. The ability of physicians to provide preventive medicine and perform risk assessments could be threatened. The ensuing debate has focused on a political and constitutional battleground between physicians and patien...

During the early 1990s, the American College of Preventive Medicine (ACPM), with support from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), identified core competencies and performance indicators (measures to assess their achievement) for all preventive medicine residents. After the competencies were approved, distributed by the ACPM and HRSA, and published in the American Journal of...

Airmen unload boxes of MREs (Meals Ready To Eat) for victims of Hurricane Marilyn. The hurricane hit the US Virgin Islands in September 1995. The role of military organizations in operations other than war is long and distinguished. As the issue of homeland defense evolves, it is likely that the mission of both Active and Reserve Component units will encompass some of the new challenges the Uni...

The author has set out to provide the minimum information of preventive medicine which a practitioner of medicine should have: accordingly this book reads in many places like a series of notes for a course of lectures. The word " Practical " in the title is misleading; the most practical items in the book are the photographs which show various up-to-date methods of disease prevention, and with ...

The US Army Yellow Fever Board was established to discover the etiology of yellow fever. In Cuba in 1900, the Board completed a series of classic experiments that showed the role of the mosquito in yellow fever transmission. Attending Private John Kissinger, who volunteered to be infected with yellow fever, are (from left) Major William C. Gorgas, the sanitation officer for Havana who would go ...

The medical and psychological effects of deployment do not necessarily dissipate once the deployment is over. Service members and their families make significant, though incompletely understood, sacrifices during deployment and may need to make major readjustments after the deployment ends. This is not a new phenomenon, but it has been much better illuminated in the wake of the Persian Gulf War.

Before these Marines arrived in Southwest Asia for the Persian Gulf War, an impressive amount of planning and coordination had been done by preventive medicine professionals on their behalf. The health threats facing these Marines had been assessed, plans had been made to counteract those threats, and systems had been put into place to monitor their health status during and after the deployment...