The phenomenon of self-healing forces has again and again challenged doctors in the different historical periods of medical science. They relied on effects of self-healing forces in diagnosis and therapy. They also tried to explain these effects based on the current model of organism. The understanding of this phenomenon has always influenced the understanding of therapy and played a role in defining the concept of health and disease. In the 17th and 18th century the idea of self-healing force was interpreted (...) as a phenomenon related to the organic forces, whereas in the 19th century the explanation was reduced to a materialistic mechanism. Nowadays the knowledge of health-shock-proteins opens the way of a new understanding of the organic defense mechanisms. (shrink)

Many philosophers and medical scientists assume that disease categories or entities used to classify concrete cases of disease are often defined by disease mechanisms or causal processes. Others suggest that diseases should always be defined in this manner. This paper discusses these standpoints critically and concludes that they are untenable, not only when 'disease mechanism' refers to an objective mechanism, but also when 'mechanism' refers to a pragmatically demarcated part of the total "objective" causal structure of diseases. As an alternative (...) to principles that use the concept of disease mechanism or analogous concepts, a pragmatic approach is suggested and described. (shrink)

The concept of disease has been the subject of a vast, vivid and versatile debate. Categories, such as "realist", "nominalist", "ontologist", "physiologist", "normativist" and "descriptivist", have been applied to classify disease concepts. These categories refer to underlying theoretical frameworks of the debate. The objective of this review is to analyze these frameworks. It is argued that the categories applied in the debate refer to profound philosophical issues, and that the complexity of the debate reflects the complexity of the concept itself: (...) disease is a complex concept, and does not easily lend itself to definition. (shrink)