| illness | 1. The condition of being ill, evil, or bad; badness; unfavorableness. "The illness of the weather." 2. Disease; indisposition; malady; disorder of health; sickness; as, a short or a severe illness. 3. Wrong moral conduct; wickedness. Within the present century, there has been a tendency in England to use illness in the sense of a continuous disease, disorder of health, or sickness, and to confine sickness more especially to a sense of nausea, or "sickness of the stomach." Synonym: Malady, disease, indisposition, ailment. Origin: From Ill. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998) |
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| illness, acute | An illness with an abrupt onset and usually a short course. (12 Dec 1998) |
| illness, chronic | An illness that has persisted for a long period of time. It is a continuing disease process. (12 Dec 1998) |
| environmental illness | A polysymptomatic condition believed by clinical ecologists to result from immune dysregulation induced by common foods, allergens, and chemicals, resulting in various physical and mental disorders. The medical community has remained largely skeptical of the existence of this "disease", given the plethora of symptoms attributed to environmental illness, the lack of reproducible laboratory abnormalities, and the use of unproven therapies to treat the condition. (12 Dec 1998) |
| functional illness | A physical disorder with no known or detectable organic basis to explain the symptoms. See: behaviour disorder, neurosis. Synonym: dynamic disease, functional disease, functional illness. (05 Mar 2000) |