The study of disease is the study of patterns. Making a diagnosis is a process of matching a patient’s presentation to a set of signs, symptoms, and findings that represent a defined biologic process. This matching process allows you to offer interventions and make prognoses on the basis of your Observations. Students beginning their study of disease would do well to create a mental template—an outline—for each disease to make recognizing its pattern easier. You begin to understand a given disease once you are able to define it and describe its prevalence, pathology, presentation, differential diagnosis, and associated methods of...
