ACUTE DISEASE (extracted from Text book on interpretation of organon of medicine)
APHORISM 72 DEFINE ACUTE AND CHRONIC DISEASES
"With respect to the first point, the following will serve as a general preliminary view. The disease to which man is liable are either rapid morbid processes of the abnormally deranged vital force, which have a tendency to finish their course more or less quickly, but always in a moderate time - these are termed acute diseases".
COMMENTARY: So a disease type that have tendency to come and go quickly. Example. diarrhea, viral fever etc.
APHORISM 73 DEFINE TYPES OF ACUTE DISEASES
As regards acute diseases, they are either of such a kind as attack human beings individually, the exciting cause being injurious influences to which they were particularly exposed. Excesses in food, or an insufficient supply of it, severe physical impression, chills, over heatings, dissipation, strains, etc., or physical irritations, mental emotions, and the like, are exciting causes of such acute febrile affections; in reality, however, they are generally only a transient explosion of latent psora, which spontaneously returns to its dormant state if the acute diseases were not of too violent a character and were soon quelled. Or they are of such a kind as attack several persons at the same time, here and there (sporadically), by means of meteoric or telluric influences and injurious agents, the susceptibility for being morbidly affected by which is possessed by only a few persons at one time. Allied to these are those diseases in which many persons are attacked with very similar sufferings from the same cause (epidemically); these diseases generally become infectious (contagious) when they prevail among thickly congregated masses of human beings. Thence arise fevers1, in each instance of a peculiar nature, and, because the cases of disease have an identical origin, they set up in all those they affect an identical morbid process, which when left to itself terminates in a moderate period of time in death or recovery. The calamities of war, inundations and famine are not infrequently their exciting causes and producers - sometimes they are peculiar acute miasms which recur in the same manner (hence known by some traditional name), which either attack persons but once in a lifetime, as the smallpox, measles, whooping-cough, the ancient, smooth, bright red scarlet fever2 of Sydenham, the mumps, etc., or such as recur frequently in pretty much the same manner, the plague of the Levant, the yellow fever of the sea-coast, the Asiatic cholera, etc.
COMMENTARY: There have been four types of acute disease as in aphorism 73.
(1)Individual
(2)Sporadic
(3)epidemic
(4)contageous
Individual: Acute affection that attack individually. These may be caused by excesses in food, or an insufficient supply of it, severe physical impression, chills, over heating, dissipation, strains, etc., or physical irritations, mental emotions, bacterial or viral infection that affect individual. e.g. food poisoning from eating stale food, diarrhea resulting from stale food, pneumonia etc
sporadic: acute disease that affect several persons here and there. e.g. chicken pox, mumps,
Epidemic: many persons are affected with similar suffering from same cause. A sudden large outbreak of an infectious disease rapidly spreading among the population eg. Chikungunya , dengue, cholera, Japanese encephalitis etc. chikungunya has been widely seen in Alapuzha district in kerala in 2006 july- octobar month. Dengue is reported in delhi in same period.
Refer our epidemic profile for more detailed presentation of various disease
contageous: the disease becomes infectious when they prevail among thickly gathered mass of human being. example outbreak of hepatitis A in college hostel