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Biomedical subjects

A W Childs

Publications and source records attributed to A W Childs.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1970

Metabolic basis for recommending how to use alcohol.

The rational use of alcohol by healthy persons aims to achieve some degree of intoxication-the drug effect of alcohol. A pattern of drinking that does this while minimizing the undesired toxic effects of alcohol may be inferred from an analysis of the metabolism of alcohol and the mechanisms of its toxic effects. While the intoxicant effect of alcohol depends on the quantity in the circulatory blood level, the toxic effects, particularly in the liver, depend largely on the total dose and are independent of the speed of absorption into the blood. Standards may be developed for the use of alcoholic beverages by healthy persons, based on these considerations. For the average person, a dosage of alcohol providing 175 calories and taken before a meal is unlikely to have significant toxic effects.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The functions of medical care.

Medical care has several important functions other than restoring or maintaining health. These other functions are assessment and certification of health status, prognostication, segregation of the ill to limit communication of illness, and helping to cope with the problems of illness--the caring function. Medical care serving these "paracurative" functions may legitimately be given indepedently, without associated curing or preventive intent of the provider of care. Although such services do not result in benefits to health, such as extension of life or reduction of disability, they do have other valued outcomes, outcomes not measurable as a gain in personal health status. For example, caring activities may result in satisfaction, comfort, or desirable affective states, even while the patient's health status deteriorates during an incurable illness. The physician's approach to patients, the economist's analysis of the benefits of health services, the planner's decisions about health programs, the evaluator's judgments about the quality of care, or the patient's expectations about treatment are strongly influenced by his assumptions about the purpose of medical care or the proper outcome of the process. When the health worker assumes that the only useful outcome is health, he may consider the paracurative services to be ineffective, inefficient, or undesirable. In contrast, when he recognizes and understands the paracurative functions of medical care, he may better perform his function in the medical care system.

Communicable Disease Control↗