Текст 3. Therapeutics.

Therapeutics is treatment and care of a patient for the purpose of both preventing and combating disease or alleviating pain or injury. The term comes from the Greek "therapeutikos", which means "inclined to serve." In a broad sense therapeutics means serving and caring for the patient in a comprehensive manner, preventing disease as well as managing specific problems.

Exercise, diet, and mental factors are therefore integral to the prevention, as well as the management, of disease processes. More specific measures that are employed to treat specific symptoms include the use of drugs to relieve pain or treat infection, surgery to remove diseased tissue or replace poorly functioning or nonfunctioning organs with fully operating ones, and counseling or psychotherapy to relieve emotional distress. Confidence in the physician and in the method selected enhances effectiveness.

Disease is a harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional state of an organism. A diseased organism commonly exhibits signs or symptoms indicative of its abnormal state. Thus, the normal condition of an organism must be understood in order to recognize the hallmarks of disease. Nevertheless, a sharp demarcation between disease and health is not always apparent.

The study of disease is called pathology. It involves the determination of the cause (etiology) of the disease, the understanding of the mechanisms of its development (pathogenesis), the structural changes associated with the disease process (morphological changes), and the functional consequences of these changes. Correct identifying of the cause of a disease is necessary for identifying the proper course of treatment. Humans, animals, and plants are all susceptible to diseases of some sort. However, that which disrupts the normal functioning of one type of an organism may have no effect on the other types.

Текст 4. A hospital

A hospital is an institution that is built, staffed, and equipped for the identification (diagnosis) of disease; for the treatment, both medical and surgical, of the sick and the injured; and for their housing during this process. The modern hospital also often serves as a centre for investigation and for teaching. To better serve the wide-ranging needs of the community, the modern hospital has often developed outpatient facilities, as well as emergency, psychiatric, and rehabilitation services.

Hospitals have long existed in every civilised country. The developing countries, which contain a large proportion of the world's population, do not have enough hospitals, equipment, and trained staff, and, by the standards of the industrialised countries, the hospitals that do exist are poorly equipped to handle the volume of people who need care. These people, then, do not always receive the benefits of modem medicine, public health measures, or hospital care, and they generally have lower life expectancies.

In the developed countries the hospital as an institution is becoming more complex as modern technology increases the range of diagnostic capabilities and expands the possibilities for treatment. As a result of the greater range of services and the more involved treatment and surgery available, the ratio of staff to patient has increased and a more highly trained staff is required.

During recent years a combination of medicine and engineering has produced a vast array of new instrumentation, much of which requires a hospital setting for its use. Hospitals thus are becoming more expensive to run, and health service administrators are increasingly concerned with the question of cost-effectiveness.