According to the PHB pp. 178:
Medicine. A Wisdom (Medicine) check lets you try to stabilize a dying companion or diagnose an illness.
That's only two things! And the first one can be accomplished in dozens of better ways, most of which involve giving the dying character at least one hit point. You can also buy a Healer's Kit for 5 gp and stabilize a character without the need to make a roll.
So that leaves diagnosing an illness. Let's think about that for a minute. Restoring someone's hit points does not remove a disease. You would need medicine to diagnose the disease and then an herbalism kit to concoct a remedy. So how often might a hero become diseased?
I found seven creatures in the Monsters' Manual that have attacks which my disease the heroes. I also found a segment in the Dungeon Masters' Guide all about adding diseases as plot elements, including the statistics for three sample diseases.
That's pretty cool stuff.
But what if I, as the DM, don't ever include monsters that carry diseases or plots about diseases? What then?
You can still use medicine to earn gold and inform the flavor of your character.
DM: So, you guys just rolled into town. What do you do first?
Thirsty Character: I find the tavern.
Greedy Character: I find a place to fence those gems we stole.
Medical Character: I'm going to go door to door offering my services as a healer. I'm specifically looking for folks who are down with a fever or other illness that need my help.
DM: Cool. Are you charging for your services?
Medical Character: Maybe...
Do that kind of thing often enough and two really cool things will happen. The first is that everyone will get a really solid idea about what kind of hero your character is (which is completely awesome). The second thing is that I will get the idea that you'd like to see an adventure that includes a supernatural disease.
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