Etiology - the cause of diseases

Etiology means the cause or origin of something.

Understanding the root cause of a disease is crucial in a medical context. Understanding the cause allows you to seek a cure.

For completeness, when the cause is unknown, the disease is called idiopathic.

People did not always understand diseases. John Snow identified the cause of cholera as germs from a specific water pump in London.

He developed the theory that germs were making us sick. People consider him one of the founding fathers of germ theory.

Etiology is not a modern discovery.

Hippocrates, in whose name we take the Hippocratic oath, wrote about rheumatoid arthritis.

“.. For the most part, their arthritis passeth from the feet to the hands, next to the elbows and knees, after these the hip joint. It is incredible how fast the mischief spreads,”

Determining the origin of diseases has not been straightforward. Until recently, cigarettes were sold as something that doctors smoked.

When someone suggested the proposition that cigarettes caused cancer, people opposed the idea for years.

Even today, we do not agree on the cause and effect of diseases. Does eating yolk cause cholesterol and therefore heart disease? What about carbohydrates? Gluten? Salt? Alcohol?

If anything, the debate is more confusing today.

We live in a world where a few people can determine the outcome of a drug.

In the past few years, a longevity expert has managed to convert a drug sold over the counter into something that can only be sold under prescription. Supply is constrained and regulated.

The drug is now marketed as a cure for ageing. Scarcity creates demand, increasing prices. The person marketing the product also validated the research.

The link to etiology?

“Ageing is an outcome of a shortage of the ingredient available in the drug,” or so we are told.

Most of us have not heard of the term etiology or frankly, the medical sounding ingredients in the stuff we consume.

But a promise to reverse or slow aging sounds alluring, doesn’t it?

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