Science in medicine

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Introduction:
'Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance', opined the Hippocratic treatise The Canon, and Hippocratic practitioners developed an approach to health, disease, and its treatment based on systematic observation and cumulative experience. Even the word physic, the root of physician as well as physicist, derives from the Greek for 'nature'. Further, Hippocratic medicine was experimental, that word stemming from the same classical roots which gave us 'experience'.
Bringing the best evidence to the point of care
Definition:
'Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients. This practice means integrating individual clinical experience with the best external clinical evidence from systematic research'.


History:
With basic research continually developing new diagnostic and treatment modalities. The methods for conducting and the criteria for assessing, research have been considerably strengthened in the twentieth century. Bradford Hill introduced the randomized trial to medicine: the Medical Research Council trial of streptomycin for pulmonary tuberculosis in 1948. Since then more than a quarter of a million such trials have been conducted. Almost simultaneously, Yerushalmy introduced greater rigour into the evaluation of diagnostic tests by quantifying the accuracy the sensitivity and specificity of chest radiograph screening for pulmonary tuberculosis. 

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