Nosology is responsible for describing and classifying diseases.
Nosology is the medical discipline whose objective is to make an exhaustive description of diseases to distinguish them from each other and classify them . Its origins date back to the 18th century when flora and fauna species began to be classified, although its current meaning begins in the 19th century .
It is also established that among the professionals who used the aforementioned science as such for the first time are skin specialists, that is, dermatologists. They began to use it precisely, as we mentioned above, in the 19th century .
What is nosology
Nosology, therefore, is responsible for systematizing pathologies according to the information that exists about them. These data, for their part, are based on existing theories about the nature of different pathologies.
The essential functions of nosology are to describe diseases to generate knowledge about their characteristics; the differentiation of pathologies to specify the identification of the disease; and the classification according to the links between the various processes analyzed.
The systematization of pathologies is one of the objectives of nosology.
The subdisciplines
It is possible to recognize various subdisciplines within nosology, such as nosotaxia , nosognostics , nosography and nosonomia . Nosotaxia is the branch that specializes in classifying conditions, while nosognostics is responsible for classification according to clinical criteria.
Nosography , for its part, focuses on describing diseases through etiology, pathogenesis, pathochrony and nosobiotics.
Regarding the aforementioned nosography, it must be made clear that through these elements it is possible to describe a specific disease, establishing the causes, the origin and development of the same, the alterations that it brings with it in the patient, the most typical and defining symptoms of the same. or evolution.
Nosonomy , meanwhile, is focused on the notion of disease, dedicating itself to studying its evolution in history, the relationship between health and diseases and other aspects. In this way, it helps to establish the distinction between a healthy person and one who is sick, justifying said differentiation.
Psychiatric nosology
In addition to everything highlighted, we must clearly establish that nosology can also be found in the field of psychiatry. Thus, we speak of psychiatric nosology to refer to the set of mental disorders that professionals have determined as such. Among them we should talk, for example, about the major depressive episode or borderline personality disorder, which are closely related to suicidal behavior.
In the same way, also in this aforementioned medical field we talk about what is the psychiatric nosology of stress thanks to which it is possible to classify and determine the different consequences, diseases and disorders that can affect a person who is subjected to continuous stress. and high levels of the aforementioned stress. In this sense, we must highlight, for example, the so-called post-traumatic stress, which usually appears after having suffered serious events such as a flood, a war or the death of a close family member, among others.