Etiology (variation: Aetiology)

Etiology (variation: Aetiology): The study of causes. Used often in medicine in reference to the causes of disease.

The aetiology of her case was particularly important but the word hysteria seemed to supply all the answers.

A Book for Today: The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

Until the causes were established, or, to use the appropriate terms, the etiology of the white evil, as, thanks to the inspiration of an imaginative assessor, this unpleasant sounding blindness came to be called, until such time as treatment and a cure might be found, and perhaps a vaccine that might prevent the appearance of any cases in the future, all the people who had turned blind, as well as those who had been in physical contact or in any way close to these patients, should be rounded up and isolated so as to avoid any further cases of contagion, which, once confirmed, would multiply more or less according to what is mathematically referred to as a compound ration.

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