dyscrasia

Dyscrasia, is a concept from ancient Greek medicine with the word "dyskrasia", meaning bad mixture.^[1]

Ancient use

To the Greeks, it meant an imbalance of the four humors: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and water (phlegm). These humors were believed to exist in the body, and any change in the balance among the four of them was the direct cause of all disease.

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 balance and imbalance of the three bodily humors, generally translated as wind, bile, and phlegm. This is also similar to the (Chinese) concept of Yin and Yang that an imbalance of the two polarities caused ailment.

Modern use

It is still occasionally used in medical context for an unspecified disorder of the blood. Specifically it is defined in current medicine as a morbid general state resulting from the presence of abnormal material in the blood, usually applied to diseases affecting blood cells or platelets.^[2]

"Plasma cell dyscrasia" is sometimes considered synonymous with paraproteinemia or monoclonal gammopathy.^[3]

References

External links

• "Blood Dyscrasia" at eCureMe

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