Inmedicine, both ancient and modern, adyscrasia is any of various disorders. The word hasancient Greek roots meaning "bad mixture".[1] The concept of dyscrasia was developed by the Greek physicianGalen (129–216 AD), who elaborated a model of health and disease as a structure of elements, qualities, humors, organs, and temperaments (based on earlierhumorism). Health was understood in this perspective to be a condition of harmony or balance among these basic components, calledeucrasia. Disease was interpreted as the disproportion of bodily fluids orfour humours: phlegm, blood, yellow bile, and black bile. The imbalance was calleddyscrasia. In modern medicine, the term is still occasionally used in medical context for an unspecified disorder of the blood, such as aplasma cell dyscrasia.
To the Greeks, it meant an imbalance of thefour humors:blood,black bile,yellow bile, and water (phlegm). These humors were believed to exist in the body, and any change in the balance among the four of them was the direct cause of alldisease.
This is similar to the concepts of bodily humors in theTibetan medical tradition and the IndianAyurvedic system, which both relate health and disease to the equality (Skt.samatā) or inequality (Skt.viṣamatā) of the quantities of three (or four) bodily humors, generally translated as wind, bile, and phlegm (and blood).
The term is still occasionally used in medical contexts for an unspecified disorder of the blood. Specifically, it is defined in current medicine as a morbid general state resulting from the presence of abnormal material in the blood, usually applied to diseases affecting blood cells or platelets. Evidence of dyscrasia can be present with a WBC (white blood cell) count of over 1,000,000.[2]
"Plasma cell dyscrasia" is sometimes considered synonymous withparaproteinemia ormonoclonal gammopathy.[3]