Biological Toolkits: Signs & Symptoms

Most medical texts work on  the premise that you know the disease you want to research.

What do you do if  you don't?

Sign = any OBJECTIVE evidence of a disease, i.e., such evidence as is PERCEIVED BY THE EXAMINING PHYSICIAN, as opposed to the SUBJECTIVE sensations (symptoms) of the patient.

Symptom = any SUBJECTIVE evidence of disease or of a patient's condition, i.e., such evidence as PERCEIVED BY THE PATIENT; a noticeable change in a patient's condition indicative of some bodily or mental state. Thus...

Differential Diagnosis = the process of determining the most likely diagnoses from among multiple diseases or conditions a patient is suffering from, by systematically comparing and contrasting their clinical findings.

The "clinical findings" may be the patient's SIGNS or the patient's SYMPTOMS, or both.