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medicine

(Encyclopedia)medicine, the science and art of treating and preventing disease. Modern medicine, characterized by growing specialization and a complex diagnostic and therapeutic technology, faces problems in the...

Southcott, Joanna

(Encyclopedia)Southcott, Joanna southˈkət [key], 1750–1814, English religious visionary. Uneducated, even illiterate, she spent her earlier years in domestic service. She began c.1792 to claim the gift of proph...

spinal puncture

(Encyclopedia)spinal puncture, surgical penetration of the spinal canal by a hollow needle introduced between two of the lumbar vertebrae. The arrangement permits injection of antibiotics or anesthetics (see anesth...

Summit, Pat

(Encyclopedia)Summit, Pat (Patricia Sue Summit), 1952–2016, American basketball player and coach, b. Clarksville, Tenn., as Patricia Sue Head. She played basketball at the Univ. of Tennessee at Martin, and upon g...

Barré-Sinoussi, Françoise

(Encyclopedia)Barré-Sinoussi, Françoise, 1947–, French virologist, Ph.D. Pasteur Institute, Paris, 1974. She has been a professor at the Pasteur Institute since 1974 and was appointed head of its retroviral uni...

Charcot, Jean Martin

(Encyclopedia)Charcot, Jean Martin zhäN märtăNˈ shärkōˈ [key], 1825–93, French neurologist. At the Salpêtrière in Paris he developed the greatest clinic of his time for diseases of the nervous system. He...

nitrogen mustard

(Encyclopedia)nitrogen mustard, any of various poisonous compounds originally developed for military use (see poison gas). Like mustard gas and lewisite, it is a vesicant (blistering agent). In the form of its crys...

orphan drug

(Encyclopedia)orphan drug, drug developed under the U.S. Orphan Drug Act (1983) to treat a disease that affects fewer than 200,000 people in the United States. The orphan drug law offers tax breaks and a seven-year...

naturopathy

(Encyclopedia)naturopathy or naturopathic medicine, branch of alternative medicine concerned with holistic and noninvasive methods of treating illness and maintaining health. Centered on the use of natural substanc...

rifampin

(Encyclopedia)rifampin rĭfămˈpĭn [key], antibiotic used in the treatment of tuberculosis. It is also used to eliminate the meningococcus microorganism from carriers and to treat leprosy, or Hansen's disease. Ri...