The term “Internal Medicine” comes from the German term “Innere Medizin”, a discipline popularized in Germany in the late 1800s to describe physicians who combined the science of the laboratory with the care of patients. Many early 20th century, American doctors studied medicine in Germany and brought this medical field to the United States. Thus, the name “Internal Medicine” was adopted. Like many words adopted from other languages, it unfortunately doesn’t exactly fit an American meaning.