V.1. HEALTH, DISEASE, DIAGNOSIS
As the religions and philosophies of the mankind have antagonistic notions of good and evil, light and darkness, and so on, so, in the medicine, there are the opposing, contradictory concepts of health and disease. The health status excludes the disease status. The medicine as a science - from the empirical to the contemporary one - arose from the need to recover the lost health or, more effectively, with the task of preventing the illnesses 1.
Naturally, the title of the chapter should have to announce at first our method in apiprophylaxis and then in apitherapy. We will explain at the right place, why we reversed the order of these concepts, whose meaning is different.
In this paper, we put into question not only the therapeutic potential of the apitherapy, but we also resume the discussion about the notion of apiprophylaxis, which we entered into the scientific circulation both through the theses designed for obtaining the medical degrees and the previously published studies (see Annex 1). We intend to argue scientifically the apitherapy efficiency by our method, closely related to the concepts of health and illness, in close relation to the diagnosis, based on signs, symptoms, medical examination, investigation of family history, socio-economic environment of the patient, etc..
The health, simply defined, is the condition of the individual where there is a good feeling, given by a proper functioning of the body - physiologically, mentally and emotionally 2.
The disease is the alteration of the state of health - physically, mentally, psychologically - that usually may have one or more external (exogenous) or internal (endogenous) causes, but not necessarily - known. The diseases can also have idiopathic causes (unidentified, of unknown origin) 3. The most accurate, succinct and in the spirit of the molecular and cellular biology and as well as in the one of the immunology definition belongs to the Romanian G.E. Palade, who, in 1982, has said: "The diseases are in fact the result of accumulated cellular malfunctions".3 The diseases can have one or more causes and are "predicted" by the signs and symptoms for which the future patients seek the doctor. There are cases where the same issue can cause the onset of different diseases and cases in which the same signs and symptoms belong to different diseases. The doctor, after studying the family health history 4 and clinic exam 5 in order to determine the cause / etiology, the accurate diagnosis (or as close to it) and to adopt the therapeutic protocol and assess the prognosis, recommends to be made some laboratory complementary investigations.
The diagnosis, whatever the condition would be, is the task of the clinician (physician) and it involves the data obtained from the disease / diseases signs, symptoms and other information obtained by history, by clinical examination and by laboratory tests and other complementary examinations.
Of course, a key role in setting the diagnosis and the therapeutic protocol plays the analysis of the data obtained through clinical and laboratory investigations, moment at which intervene, qualitatively, the clinical experience of the doctor. They sometimes spoke about the clinical sense of the great doctors, which supposes the intervention of the intuitive mechanisms. The later especially, resulting not only of the exceptional training and clinical experience, are the privilege of the great doctors gifted to their noble profession. These people, who do not treat the disease but they treats the patient, the man, are those who bring the medicine to the statutus of the arts.
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1. In the ancient and medieval China the most appreciated doctors were the ones who prevented the illness.
In the World Health Organization (WHO) the health is not just the absence of the disease or any infirmity, but it includes, in addition to physical and mental well being, the social well being.
3. Cited Valeriu Rusu, Medical Dictionary, Medical Publishing, second edition revised and enlarged, Bucharest, 2007, p 256.
4. The history usually precedes the clinical examination. It consists of the information obtained by the physician through the discussion with the patient or his carers on the symptoms, history - health history - family history of any significant illness, disease, some details of the development, etc…
5. The clinical examination involves examining the patient in the doctor's office, outpatient or stationary, at the bedside. This exam, along with the positive family history and investigation precedes and makes recommendations for the laboratory analysis and / or other additional tests (ultrasound, imaging, endoscopy, allergy, parasitological, toxicological, microbiological and so on).