Some thoughts on Health Promotion in the United States Army.

摘要

The linked concepts of disease prevention and health promotion are certainly not novel. Ancient Chinese texts discussed ways of life to maintain good health, and in classical Greece, the followers of the gods of medicine associated the healing arts not only with the god Aesculapius but with his two daughters. Panacea and Hygeia. While Panacea was involved with medication of the sick, her sister Hygeia was concerned with living wisely and preserving health. Galen (c. 130-201), the physician who began his practice as a surgeon to gladiators, wrote on the 'necessary causes of health or disease' and listed his six causes as the ambient air, motion and rest, sleep and waking, things taken in, things excreted and retained, and affections of the soul. These categories are not unfamiliar despite their age of 1800 years. Over the next millennium, the most influential work appears to have been the famous poem from the Medical School at Salerno 'Regimen Sanitatis Salernitatum,' which served as a handbook of health promotion and 'domestic' medicine in its Latin form until its 1607 translation into English. This self-help advice on nutrition and personal hygiene is alleged to have been collated for Duke Robert, the eldest son of William the Conqueror (c. 1000), although a case has been made tracing its history to a prose epistle written by Aristotle for the benefit of his pupil Alexander the Great. Since the history of health and disease is essentially the history of humanity, the preceding historical items are presented merely to identify several of the early examples of health promotion. pg 1 2. JMD.