as it is to technical medical advance

[GoodTaste]

200 years isn’t a milestone. It is only a brief moment in the long and erratic history of human endeavour. Much of what we call progress in health is as much due to increasing prosperity and wider educational opportunity, as it is to technical medical advance. But the importance of health as an idea in society lies beyond the immediate materiality of bodily wellbeing.

Source: The Lancet.

I wonder whether there is a comma "," missing between "technical" and "medical" above.

​

 

[teechar]

I wonder whether there is a comma "," missing between "technical" and "medical" above.

No. That's not possible, because there's no "and" linking the two.

 

[GoodTaste]

No. That's not possible, because there's no "and" linking the two.

What does "technical medical advance" mean then? Is it the equivalent of "technical and medical advance"?

 

[stanislaw.masny]

Not a teacher.

I understand it as "technical progress in medicine",

 

[emsr2d2]

It's technical advances in the field of medicine. There is nothing missing from the original. The writer chose to put a comma between the two adjectives describing the advances.

 

[GoodTaste]

Not a teacher.

I understand it as "technical progress in medicine",

It's technical advances in the field of medicine. There is nothing missing from the original.

If so, could it be expressed as "technically medical advance"?

 

[5jj]

No.

 

[Flask]

What does "technical medical advance" mean then? Is it the equivalent of "technical and medical advance"?

I understand technical there to be modifying medical advance as a phrasal unit, not modifying advance independently of, or in addition to, medical. Technical is being used with the following definition from The Oxford English Dictionary:

"2.c. Officially or properly so called or regarded; that is such from a specialist point of view; strictly so considered."

Here's one of the recent examples given by the OED for technical under that definition: "Several weeks later Mr. Byrd and Ms. Kalos went on what she described as ‘our technical first date’" (New York Times, 2008).

In that example, their first date wasn't technical. That is not the meaning. The meaning is that it was technically or officially their first date. It was their official first date; it was their first date strictly so considered.

I would paraphrase technical in the "Lancet" example with proper as a postmodifier: "Much of what we call progress in health is as much due to increasing prosperity and wider educational opportunity, as it is to medical advance proper."