Prospects in Medical Treatment

Abstract

In the history of therapeutics, serendipity has contributed so significantly to some of the major advances that any attempts to look ahead may be out of date by the time such predictions appear in print. But fortunately this risk is small and it is satisfyingly true that current progress in medical treatment owes more to advancement of basic scientific knowledge than perhaps at any time in the past. There remain great areas of morbidity—where previously, treatment at best has been empirical, ineffective but harmless, and at worst provided the seeds of iatrogenic disease —which now show promise of yielding to the rational scientific approach.