[The concept of chronicity and degeneration in neurology]. / Cronicidad y degeneración en neurología.

ABSTRACT

Chronic degenerative diseases hold a special place in current medicine due to the impact they have in the patient, the familiar and medical environment, and by its social, financial and work related repercussions. Even though medical literature includes numerous scientific writings that approach diverse aspects of these diseases, just a few of them deal with historical or conceptual questions. Following the historical evolution that medical language has undergone will allow us to approach and to study in depth both scientific and medical knowledge. The aim of this study was analyze, from a historical perspective, how two concepts chronic and degeneration, that have a single origin, are used differently and have a different meaning, nowadays have been combined to describe diseases with an underlying biological process, generally known as degenerative, and which in addition share a temporal condition. In this sense chronic degenerative diseases offer medicine new challenges and different ways to approach them.