12:45am May 6, 2013

Wow I just came up with another good analogy.

So gastroparesis the symptom of migraines isn’t the same as gastroparesis the condition.

Autism was a word originally coined to describe a specific symptom of schizophrenia. Later it was borrowed by both Kanner and Asperger to describe a condition of its own.

Saying that gastroparesis (the condition) is caused by migraines is like saying that autism (the condition) is caused by schizophrenia.

Although autism and schizophrenia have a far more complex relationship than the analogy would suggest. But that’s because they’re both products of psychiatry, which is a notoriously fuzzy excuse for a science. Migraines and gastroparesis come from a medical tradition that’s at least somewhat more likely to produce actual descriptions of real things. (Although migraines did used to be considered at least partially psychiatric in origin, too.)

But anyway. That’s an even better analogy than my other one.

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