TY - JOUR T1 - <span hwp:id="article-title-1" class="article-title">What do we mean by health?</span><span hwp:id="article-title-5" class="sub-article-title">Commentary</span><span hwp:id="article-title-7" class="sub-article-title">Commentary</span> JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 320 LP - 323 VL - 55 IS - 513 AU - Alistair Tulloch AU - Peter Davies AU - Mike Fitzpatrick Y1 - 2005/04/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/55/513/320.abstract N2 - The main objective of the doctor's work, in whatever field he or she functions, is ultimately the restoration and maintenance of health. Yet, as Smith pointed out some time ago, disease and health are ‘slippery concepts’ that we have not been able to define clearly hitherto.1 The difficulty of defining health was clearly illustrated when the distinguished figures of the World Health Organisation (WHO) were asked to undertake this task in 1948. Their response was that ‘health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’.2 Now, a definition should define clearly the nature of a subject as it is or by what effect it has; that is, what it does. In addition, in the fields of science and medicine, it should indicate how the subject is produced and enable it to be measured. The WHO definition did none of these things — it merely took one vague entity ‘health’ and defined it in terms of another equally obscure concept, ‘wellbeing’. It did, however, point out that there was more to health than simply the absence of disease, but this was not really a definition at all, being merely a rather vague description. The waters remained as muddy as ever and the measurement of health was in no way facilitated. Incidentally, the Oxford English Dictionary is no more precise on this subject. It offers a number of meanings including ‘soundness of body, that condition in which functions are duly discharged, spiritual, moral or mental soundness, salvation, well-being, safety and deliverance’ — all parts of the picture, but a real definition is still some way off.Now one does not have to be Wittgenstein to recognise the absurdity of the situation in which doctors regard health as the main … ER -