Where to find a disease

[摘要] Where do diseases live? It seems an oddquestion, but perhaps an important one,because we need to find a disease in orderto treat it. Some simple examples show howobvious this is. If someone fractures theirankle, that’s where the pathology is, andwe’d be pretty foolish to apply a cast to theirwrist. Similarly, someone with a urinarytract infection has disease located in theirurine, and we even literally go looking for itwith a microscope and agar plates. In fact,all infections have an external pathogeninvading a particular location in the bodyto cause disease. Sometimes the locationof the disease is a bit less clear cut. Afractured vertebra may also indicate anescaped prostate cancer, and the hunt is onfor other locations.

[学科分类] 卫生学