Product Code Database
In medicine, both ancient and modern, a dyscrasia is any of various disorders. The word has ancient Greek roots meaning "bad mixture".Aphorism 79 or Organon of Medicine by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann The concept of dyscrasia was developed by the Greek physician Galen (129–216 AD), who elaborated a model of health and disease as a structure of elements, qualities, humors, organs, and temperaments (based on earlier humorism). Health was understood in this perspective to be a condition of harmony or balance among these basic components, called eucrasia. Disease was interpreted as the disproportion of bodily fluids or four humours: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. The imbalance was called dyscrasia. In modern medicine, the term is still occasionally used in medical context for an unspecified disorder of the blood, such as a plasma cell dyscrasia.
This is similar to the concepts of bodily humors in the Tibetan medical tradition and the Indian Ayurvedic system, which both relate health and disease to the equality (Skt. samatā) or inequality (Skt. viṣamatā) of the quantities of three (or four) bodily humors, generally translated as wind, bile, and phlegm (and blood).
"Plasma cell dyscrasia" is sometimes considered synonymous with paraproteinemia or monoclonal gammopathy.
H2 receptor antagonists, such as famotidine and nizatidine, in use for treatment of , are known for causing blood dyscrasia – leading to bone marrow failure in 1 out of 50,000 patients.
|
|
