Polypragmatism

Quick meaning: Polypragmatism is a noun meaning (medicine) The approach of trying various possible therapeutic treatments with no clear diagnostic guide.

Meaning

(medicine) The approach of trying various possible therapeutic treatments with no clear diagnostic guide.

More Meanings

1. (more generally) The use of multiple approaches to a single issue.
2. The application of a single approach or solution to multiple problems.
3. A tendency toward meddling or officiousness.

Example Sentences

The pressure on the physician to provide therapy and the unquestionable need for treatment have led to certain polypragmatisms.

Faced with wheezing, blue-faced patients, they felt they had to do something, and the approach they adopted was polypragmatism, or polypharmacy: they threw the medicine cabinet at the problem.

In the later imperial age, medical polypragmatism seems to have been the order of the day. The most diverse remedies were administered, not least because, as Galen himself admitted, 'the people demand medication'.

Why interfere with a self-limited condition unless some unusual feature, a danger sign, makes its appearance? Polypragmatism was always ridiculous. Is it not polypragmatism if we do something useless, unnecessary, uncalled for?

Word Forms

• polypragmatisms

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include eclecticism, praxis, applicationism, experimentalism, theoreticism, empirism.

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