Symptomologist

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A specialist or researcher who analyzes symptoms and their patterns to understand disease processes and aid in medical diagnosis
2. An expert who investigates and interprets the signs and symptoms patients present in order to identify underlying medical conditions
3. A professional who examines and studies symptoms as indicators of illness, helping to establish diagnoses through careful analysis of clinical presentations

Etymology: The Greek "sympt┼Źma" originally meant something that befalls or happens to a person, an occurrence or coincidence, built from "sym-" (together) and "piptein" (to fall). Its sense of a sign of disease came later, when physicians began reading such occurrences as indications of an underlying condition. English took the medical sense from the Greek-derived Latin form. Symptomology adds "-logy," from Greek "l├│gos," meaning the study or systematic account of something. A symptomologist is therefore someone who studies symptoms, and the "-ist" ending marks a person who practises that study. Unlike older medical terms, these are modern formations built from classical parts to name a specialist field.