Tag: terminology

Illness, Healing, and Other Terms That Can Be Confusing

Watch your language. Some terms that are frequently confused: pain vs. suffering, disease vs. illness, cure vs. healing. Science-based medicine focuses on diseases; alternative medicine focuses on illness: that explains a lot.

/ November 16, 2021

The Meaning of Secondary Prevention

A November letter to the editor in American Family Physician chastises that publication for misusing the term “secondary prevention,” even using it in the title of an article that was actually about tertiary prevention. I am guilty of the same sin. I had been influenced by simplistic explanations that distinguished only two kinds of prevention: primary and secondary. I thought primary prevention...

/ January 11, 2011