The Rise of Biomedicine and Its Relevance to Health and Illness in Contemporary British Society

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THE RISE OF BIOMEDICINE AND ITS RELEVANCE TO HEALTH AND ILLNESS
IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH SOCIETY
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Introduction
Bio-medicine is the name given to the modern scientific medicine. It describes the
biological concepts of medicine. Consequently, it gives the relationship about the
learning of body structure, usually referred to as the anatomy and the body systems
(physiology). Besides, bio-medicine helps in the understanding of the different body
organs like the heart, brain, nerves, etc. Health is a condition in which all the body
organs and parts are able to function properly without hitches (Nolan, 2017).
Therefore, bio-medicine is one that provides the physical as well as the biological
meaning of health. To establish whether the body parts or organs do not function
properly, certain tests can be carried out. Consequently, there are drugs, or
antibiotics could be used for curing specific diseases. Fractured or broken body parts
can also be used for repairing or replacement (Åm, 2018). The Western cultures
observe the biomedical model as the one of the most important ways of
understanding the health and healthcare systems. It is plays a critical role in helping
to understand the effectiveness of healthcare considering many problems that
involve health.
Biomedicine and public health in Britain
The emergence of biomedicine has brought about the knowledge of the causes of
different diseases. Recently, there has been a revolution in terms of industrialization
and urbanization which has also directly and indirectly contributed to the emergence
of different diseases. In this connection, there has been a movement of public health.
The mandate of the public is to create to discover the emergence of diseases, create
awareness, advice and implement a work plan to ensure that the public is
adequately informed (Kendrick and Beesley, 2016). The public health movements
have been in the fore front in implementing policies that are aimed at the
environment is friendly enough for the existence of human being.
The emergence of biomedicine has played an important role in making people of UK
to understand health and illnesses. There are many instances where biomedicine
has proved to be beneficial to issues of health. Such proponents of biomedicine
include the reduction of the rates of mortality and improvement of general health of
individuals. However, there have been arguments that reduction of mortality rates

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has been made possible by improvement in housing and the working conditions.
Specifically, improved nutrition is seen to have played a vital role in the general
reduction of mortality rates (Tsai, 2011). Although biomedicine has made it possible
to find the cure for many diseases, it is important to realize the link between the
environment and the public health. This is because the inclusion of public health
considerations in the impacts and developments of the biomedical model has
brought many discoveries and benefits in the public health sector as well as the
improvement of individual health.
The relation between medicine and the study of life is believed to be as old as
medicine. However, since the nineteenth century, historians have explained that
there is a remarkable transformation in the development of physiology and
bacteriology that have been used in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. The
history of bacteriology symbolises the problems of conflicting trends in the
development of medicine (Nolan, 2017). Although people can celebrate that the
invention of bacteriology was fruitful, some bacteriological inventions like diphtheria
and the bacteriology itself did not give a comprehensive effect on the public health
sector of the early twentieth century.
Additionally, historians give account on the history of tuberculosis in Europe as one
that started as early as the nineteenth century. The successful discovery of
tuberculosis, however, is not because of animal modelling but it also came from the
discovery of the use of X-rays which made it possible to detect and diagnose it as
early as possible (Pilgrim, 2012). Therefore, it is true that after the invention of
antibiotics, for instance, in the late 1940s and early 1950s that proper intervention to
control and treat the tuberculosis-causing bacteria was found due to the contribution
of bacteriology which, was discovered through combined research by both academic
and industrial labs. Considering the discovery of tuberculosis, we can conclude that
biomedicine was completely discovered and invented after the World War II (Happell
and Cleary, 2012).
Recently, several researches have proved that there is a huge improvement into the
way biomedicine has evolved. More importantly, increased investment in research
and entrepreneurial development have improved the findings about the biomedicine