Meicine is the practice of maintaining and restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of patients, whose death it is the discipline's ultimate concern to avert. It has traditionally been regarded as both an art and a science: the term is derived from the Latin ars medicina meaning the art of healing. Whilst health science and biomedicine, clinical medicine, surgery and research are together the very bedrock of contemporary medicine, successful face-to-face relief of actual suffering resulting from disease and injury continues to require the intangible application of human feeling and compassion.