The thinker and writer Melampo in the year 630 AD, due to a comment made to the treatises of Dionysus of Thrace, said:
"Etymology is the dismemberment of words, by which the truth is clarified".
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After many applications, uses and historical interpretations in diverse languages and academic doctrines, the etymological origin of this word remains valid despite its translation from Greek into Latin, leaving a compound of two words, namely: etymos, whose literal translation is "true", and logos, which means "treaty" or "study ".
Now, it is necessary to dispense in the idea that this term was born as a cultism introduced by philosophers, scientists and thinkers of the time, in search of expressing ideas that did not have a word that would serve to express what was desired within the everyday language that used to be used the vulgar It is for this reason that we can freely interpret the suffix "Logos" as "Word" (variant in the translation), instead of "Study", in order to get right with the idea of the thinkers.
Starting from this dismemberment, we understand the term as "true word" or, being rational in the expression of the idea and considering the abstraction of the suffix used "ía", we can define "etymology" as the "quality of the truth of the word" . Definition that acquires more force when glimpsing that the term "ethimo", which derives from its Greek root "etymos", is defined freely as "the word from which a word comes".
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Then, at the expense of this historical account of the etymologies, it is necessary to understand that they have served as taxonomic resources in view of the obvious utility in the applications of "cultism" in terms of science and health.
In Medicine we do not escape from this reality, and many of the words that are used to express filial ideas to the area of performance start from this philosophical aggregate. Evidently, the term "etiology" also has its curious origin.
Being born of its Greek root "aitología", we can dismember the word to obtain its true definition. The prefix "aito" (or "aitia", originally) that expresses "cause" or "reason of", the word "logos" where we will make the same variant applicable in the translation to define it as "word" or "expression" in instead of "treaty" or "study", and the suffix "ía" that applies the same abstraction of "quality". Although its inclination in terms of medicine is not apparent to the naked eye, this is explained by the fact that the word is not confined only in terms of health.
The "etiology" in chairs such as philosophy, biology, criminal law, physics and psychology simply refers to "the cause of phenomena". However, and due to its wide use in the field, its use in medicine gives it a more generic definition, which more identifies the term universally referring to it as "the science focused on the study of the causes of diseases", also known as the pathogenesis, or "origin of the disease".
The etiology is, therefore, the science focused on the study of the origin of diseases.
The types and models within the aetiology are directly related in the classification of etiopathogenesis. The elements that determine the development of a disease are the agent, the host and the environment. The concurrence between these three elements brings about the outcome of the formation of the pathology. The etiology will focus on agglomerating according to the causes of this imbalance in order to classify them and facilitate their study.
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As an example of these we have the endogenous diseases, which start from the alterations proper to the physiology of the host, as are the metabolic, inflammatory, genetic, degenerative, autoimmune and congenital diseases. In contrast, exogenous diseases are those whose cause is attributed to the action of the agent on the host, as occurs with infectious, parasitic, venereal, toxic and allergic diseases.
There are also diseases whose attribution can occur directly to the effect of the environment and the agent as a whole on the host, causing injuries from external, professional, mechano-mental or simply environmental causes. And there are the most subjective, which cover a slightly more extensive field, being those of the multifactorial cause, such as developmental diseases, neoplastic, idiopathic and psychosomatic.
The most primitive models of medical histories already involved the patient in the clinical record when questioning him about the possible causes of his ailments. It is a practice that Hippocrates himself used. However, its development as a science would take a little longer, until the times of Pasteur and Bernard, in which both scientists would seek to determine if the causes were unique (Pasteur's posture with its pathogenesis based on germs and microbes) or multifactorial (Bernard's posture) by defending the internal environment, and the alteration of homeostasis mediating the correlation of environmental factors, internal and external.
By the end of the 19th century, it would be Robert Koch who would include the first definition of Clinical Etiology within his treatises. However, the constant advances and progress within the medical academy would allow, that entered into the twentieth century, it was determined that the causes of diseases are multifactorial, not only enclared in isolated origins, but in a constant correlation of the pyramid of the environment, agent and guest, whose balance allows the state of health.
Bibliography
- Introduction to Pathology. José Hurtado de Mendoza. Havana, 2004.
- What is the etiology? Article by Oscar Mimenza. 2018.
- All the images acquired from PixaBay.