THE RISE AND PROSPECTS OF MEDICAL AESTHETICS

Since the 1980s, Chinese scholars have been trying to expound and synt hethise elementary aesthetical ideas which occur in medicine, in order to treat this area of study as a defined branch of medicine-'medical aesthetics'. It is in this context that the points discussed in this p aper arise. We set forth in detail the ideas, objectives and methods a dopted within the framework of medical aesthetics and its applied bran ch-medical cosmetology and expound the relations between them. We thin k the task of medical aesthetics is to study the human body in its ent irety, concentrating on both internal and external beauty and put the findings into practice, whereas the task of medical cosmetology is to study and assess only the external beauty of the human body and to tak e action on that basis. Medical cosmetology is the enforcement of medi cal aesthetics, practised in order to give positive results connected with physical beauty, and is therefore easily understood by the layman . It is known that the development of medical cosmetology represents a n important breakthrough in the development of medical aesthetics. We think that beauty should not be measured mechanically, always followin g the same pattern, but that it should be considered individually with everyone's own particular characteristics. The quality of physical at tractiveness should be assessed jointly by the doctor and his patient or client, not solely by either of these individuals nor even by a gro up of doctors. The necessity of defining and developing both medical a esthetics and medical cosmetology arises largely as a result of the in creasing numbers of people who pursue beauty and health and is in acco rdance with the trend for consolidating different aspects of modern sc ience. A main objective of medical advance is to improve the quality o f health and beauty; to enhance the quality of life and encourage huma n beings toward achieving perfection in both health and beauty. We pre dict that in the future medical aesthetics and medical cosmetology wil l be amongst those subjects considered to be of major importance in th e medical field. We have at last reached a stage where we can define t he intentions and applied measures of medical aesthetics and medical c osmetology which differ from those of clinical medicine, preventive me dicine, or recuperative medicine.