"Disease" or "Condition?"
One of my pet peeves is the medical community’s loose language when naming maladies as either a disease or a condition. I warn readers that I’m, herein, expressing my personal biases more than knowledge about the origins, usages of these terms.
On a fundamental language level, disease [to me] means its literal syllabic break out. It means illness of any kind. Dis-ease is not-at-ease. I also take this meaning as a colloquial meaning, not a technical meaning. Hence, this colloquial meaning gives rise and excuse to calling just about any malady a disease.
But on a technical level, disease should properly indicate a pathogenic disorder… One arising from an infection of some kind by a pathogen (germ) such as a virus, bacterium, fungus, etc. and one that is perhaps communicable.
[Another dimension to this discussion—which I will not explore—are the expanded applications of the Greek, pathos… which often regards suffering of any kind. This gives rise to words like pathological, pathologic, words widely applied in many areas. ]
And in my rigid (restricted) perspective, a condition is one of many maladies not caused by a pathogen. Many of the big scourges of our health are such. Cancer is not generally caused by a pathogen, nor is so-called chronic kidney disease (CDK), nor is heart disease, nor is diabetes Type-II (more specifically: insulin resistance).
Of course, these properly designated conditions can be precipitated pathogenically. An [pathogenic] infection might knock out the beta cells of the Islets of Langerhans to render a person a Type-I diabetic. My original strep infection certainly led to a heart condition and a kidney condition.
My so-called Still’s disease is a perfect case in point. It is a glaring example of a pure condition—a malady with no pathogen. To correct it, there is no bug to kill, no infection, although it is the after effect of a biological system that went wild with a cytokine storm wreaking havoc throughout my body in a desperate quest to expel a pathogen. I declare that Still’s disease is absolutely not a disease. And as such, it is not communicable.
What’s more, the Still’s disease is diagnosed by confirming that there is, indeed, no infection (disease). By process of exclusion, the Still’s remains the only remaining possibility. Still’s is an inflammatory reaction dispersed to fight a phantom disease.
Of course, Still’s disease was named over a hundred years ago. The name naturally stuck as is so often the case. Still’s condition doesn’t ring right to the ears, I suppose.
Whenever I hear a doctor mention a “disease” new to my ear, I immediately pin him down as to whether it is pathogenic in origin.
Also note that the occasion arises where maladies long categorized as conditions are indeed discovered to have a direct pathogenic basis.
If you believe that I’m all wet on this one, please say.