Nosology

Nosology is a branch of medicine that deals with classification of diseases.

Types of classification
Diseases may be classified by etiology (cause), pathogenesis (mechanism by which the disease is caused), or by symptom(s). Alternatively, diseases may be classified according to the organ system involved, though this is often complicated since many diseases affect more than one organ.

A chief difficulty in nosology is that diseases often cannot be defined and classified clearly, especially when etiology or pathogenesis are unknown. Thus diagnostic terms often only reflect a symptom or set of symptoms (syndrome).

History
The Ayurveda is a collection of early Indian works about medicine. In China the Huangdi Neijing is another ancient text. In the West, Hippocrates was one of the earliest writers on the subject of disease. The book of Leviticus also includes an early discussion of the treatment of skin diseases. See Metzora (parsha) In the 10th century the Arabian psychologist Najab ud-din Unhammad classified a nosology of nine major categories of mental disorders, which included 30 different mental illnesses in total. Some of the categories he described included obsessive-compulsive disorders, delusional disorders, degenerative diseases, involutional melancholia, and states of abnormal excitement.

In the 18th century, the taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus, Francois Boissier de Sauvages, and psychiatrist Philippe Pinel developed an early classification of physical illnesses. Thomas Sydenham's work in the late 17th century might also be considered a nosology. In the 19th century, Emil Kraepelin and then Jacques Bertillon developed their own nosologies. Bertillon's work, classifying causes of death, was a precursor of the modern code system, the International Classification of Diseases.

The early nosological efforts grouped diseases by their symptoms, whereas modern systems (e.g. SNOMED) focus on grouping diseases by the anatomy and etiology involved.

Applications

 * Nosology is used extensively in public health, to allow epidemiological studies of public health issues. Analysis of death certificates requires nosological coding of causes of death.
 * Nosological classifications are used in medical administration, such as filing of health insurance claims, and patient records, among others