From Unknown Illnesses To The Limits Of Reason

Hippocrates: a conventionalized image in a Roman "portrait" bust (19th century engraving) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My mother died in 2010 and I was too ill to go back. When my relatives asked me what kind of illness I had, I had to use bunches of words to describe my condition, because there was no term for my my problem. I did not convince them, so judgment came along.

I consider myself a quite convincing person, but why didn't I convince them on this "simple" matter? Years later I found the reason was simple: I did not have a name for my illness. Had I just thrown them a term like "myalgic encephalomyelitis", I could easily shut all of them up. But sadly that's not what I got. What I've got had no name - at least according to  modern medicine, which most people worship, so my explanation became excuse.