The Knowledge According to Its Source

3.0 Abstract

In contemporary textbooks of “medicine” there is a complete absence of content on general concepts and principles – general theory – of medicine, or there is merely a token treatment of topics that are misconstrued as being ones of general principles of medicine. The substantive contents of these general textbooks, and also those of particular disciplines of medicine, are not organized with a view to the knowledge needs for diagnosis and prognosis, respectively; and etiognosis never is even a topic. Very little of the contents addresses diagnostic or prognostic probabilities, and this, even, generally amounts only to a few very sketchy remarks. And even the very concepts of common illnesses are liable to remain remarkably muddled.

Medical journals, too, are poor sources of genuine knowledge relevant for the practice of medicine, while rich, instead, in reports on and unjustifiable conclusions and pseudo-conclusions from poorly conceived and poorly reported studies.

In this context, unsurprisingly, medical education remains largely devoid of well-conceived purposes and relevant contents.

So, the entire knowledge culture of medicine is in need of radical overhaul and rectification.