CONCEPT OF ILLNESS AND DISEAS

 CONCEPT OF ILLNESS AND NURSING 

Illness may be a highly personal state during which the man  emotionalal, intellectual, social, developmental, or spiritual functioning is assumed to be diminished.

It is not synonymous with disease and may or might not be associated with the disease.

Illness is very subjective; only the individual person can say he or she is ill.

DISEASE

Disease is defined as pathologic change within the structure or function of the body or mind.

Disease are often described as an alteration in body functions leading to a discount of capacities or a shortening of the traditional lifetime .

Primitive people thought "forces" or spirits caused disease.

 

DIFFERENT CONCEPTS ON CAUSATION OF DISEASES IN NURSING

Religion, philosophy and medicine were integral part within the early a part of civilization. Philosophy accepted the influence of inanimate bodies like sun, moon and stars on living bodies.

 Another concept was the spirit as a messenger of Gods giving warnings within the sort of diseases. another concept was a person's enemy with supernatural powers, send evil spirits to harm others. The souls of dead ancestors influencing his relations were another belief.

Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of a private by a malevolent spiritual being . Expressions include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying, access to hidden knowledge and foreign languages, drastic changes in vocal intonation and facial structure, sudden appearance of injuries (scratches, bite marks) or lesions, and superhuman strength.

Many cuneiform tablets contain prayers to certain gods posing for protection from demons, while others asked the gods to expel the demons that invaded their bodies.

Punitive theory

Punitive theory has its origin with the faith with the assumption that one's attitude toward the deity is responsible as a explanation for sickness. From a period centuries before the Christian era right down to this time, there are beliefs that disease was a punishment administered by an outraged God for the sins of the individual or the race. There are recorded statements in biblical writings where in punishment is meted for a sin of David, with devastating plague during which the entire nation suffered and which was stayed only by David's repentance and therefore the making of a sacrifice.

Such references are abundantly available in Hindu mythology also especially those associated with eruptive fevers like Small pox, Chicken Pox etc.

Humoral theory

The Greeks rejected the super natural theories and searched on disease as a natural action . They advocated that the matter is formed from four elements- Earth, Air, Fire and Water and these elements have the corresponding qualities of being Cold, Dry, Hot and Moist. With this idea they hypothesized that these qualities are represented within the body by four humors- Phlem, choler , melancholy and blood. consistent with this theory, the equilibrium among these humours characterizes health (eucrasia), and disequilibrium (dyscrasia) characterizes disease.

Hippocrates moved medicine from magic and metaphysics to offer it a scientific basis. He introduced logic into medical thinking, elaborated the idea of humours and recognized the importance of the environment in health. He also suggested that an more than one among the humours would end in various idiosyncrasies - hematic, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic.

The theory of humours was known in India, China, Egypt and Greece.

Miasmatic theory

Miasmatic theory is predicated on the inference that the air arising from certain sorts of ground, especially low, swampy areas, was a explanation for disease. Certain places were thus given a really evil reputation, because the bottom was said to exude some invisible, insensible vapour, called it miasm, which produced disease.

The invention of miasma was really starting to be scientific medicine. People were checking out a cloth and natural causes, instead finding shelter on god or a devil. Rational thinking that something cannot begin of nothing was the idea of this idea . the very fact that malaria was prevalent within the vicinity of swampy land, and a few evidence that folks who ventured call at these swampy places were more likely to urge the disease, lent plausibility to the present theory. it had been the assumption within the air because the causative agent that gave malaria its name, mal aria ('bad air' in Medieval Italian).

Contagion theory

Girolamo Fracastoro (1478-1553), an Italian physician, contended that there's an outsized class of diseases caused by contagion instead of humoral imbalances.

This was supported the observation that persons could contract infections albeit their humors are normally balanced. Fracastoro defined a contagion as a "corruption which develops within the substance of a mixture , passes from one thing to a different , and is originally caused by infection of the imperceptible particles”. He called the particles the seminaria (seeds or seedlets) of contagion. Fracastoro was unable to mention much about the character of those suspected particles; bacteria weren't observed by van Leeuwenhoek until 1683, and their role in infection wasn't appreciated until the 1860s.

Fracastoro nevertheless discussed the causes and treatment of varied contagious diseases. He described how contagion can occur by direct contact, by indirect contact via clothes and other substances, and by long-distance transmission. additionally , he stated that diseases can arise within a private spontaneously. His book has chapters for the arrangement of contagious diseases. His theory remained influential for nearly three centuries, before being superseded by a totally developed scientific theory .

MODERN VIEWS