eMJA: Boundaries of medicine

To the Editor: Van Der Weyden has commented on the World Health Organization's Utopian definition of "health", first promulgated in 1948.1

In 1973, I addressed this matter in a speech to the All Nations Club in Sydney, and again in 1980 when presenting a paper to The Hope Foundation (a large charitable health organisation in the United States). For what it is worth, my suggested definition of "health" was:

Health is a high level of physical, mental and social comfort appropriate to the age of the person concerned and attainable within the economic constraints of the particular environment.

It seems we have some agreement, and I would like to see the WHO again consider definition!

Van Der Weyden MB. Boundaries of medicine [letter]. Med J Aust 2003; 178: 192. <eMJA full text>

(Received 13 Mar 2003, accepted 17 Mar 2003)

Correspondence: Sir Keith S Jones, 123 Bayview Gardens, Cabbage Tree Road, Bayview, NSW 2104. rgjones1ATbigpond.com

AntiSpam note: To avoid spam, authors' email addresses are written with AT in place of the usual symbol, and we have removed "mail to" links. Replace AT with the correct symbol to get a valid address.