id·i·o·path·ic and cryp·​to·​gen·​ic

The terms are closely related.  See HERE for idiopathic, and HERE for cryptogenic.

Suffice it to say that there are medical conditions and diseases which elude--or even defy--explanation. The origin and course of these strange medical conditions can be described (in part) but remain unexplained, just as their causes remain unexplained.  A fit and healthy person dies on the operating table during what was considered a "low risk" surgery.  A person with a range of health difficulties and who is given a slim chance for survival during a surgery, miraculously pulls through and rapidly recovers. Conditions can mysteriously disappear; for example, a person around the age of thirty is surprised that his or her allergies suddenly "go away".  A person suddenly finds that she can go without a cold or flu for over a year at a time.  

In formulating modern skeptical-empirical scientific theory, John Locke (a physician and professor of medicine) observed that in many cases we know something is happening, but we don't quite know what that something is; ergo, we proceed in any case as best we can with what works, or what has been shown to work in similar circumstances.  Our lack of knowledge (or even a theory) is a difficulty but also is no absolute obstacle to treating a patient and doing as best we can, with the provision we might expect to discover more in the future. Indeed, we conduct our practice and our treatment in such a way that we record what we observe, with the goal in mind of identifying what we do know and what we do not know.  Both are of importance to our knowledge.

The ability to proceed without clear knowledge or even a theory is a characteristic of Skeptical-Empirical (or Modern) Science, and regrettably our ability to effectively proceed "in the dark," as it were, is often challenged by the cult of the expert (an import from Continental Philosophy). It is a cult that is alien to modernity and, ominously, traditional Western liberal freedom.  The apparatchiks of this cult claim to "follow the science", or claim "I am the science", and, significantly, they (or their subalterns) vilify modernity by associating it with a range of characterizations that paint modernity as somehow unethical, immoral, and so on. 

In the Continental view, ALL knowledge is theoretical. There is no truth distinction. Indeed, there is no truth, but rather consensus among experts, and truth is relative to the (or a) consensus and/or an individual expert.  If all knowledge is theoretical, then there can be a theories to explain things we don't know.  Hmm. In more direct terms--and as it bears upon our understanding here--there is a rejection of the notion that it is proper (and we are comfortable with) not knowing something.  Pivoting to the political, the present of the unknown is a threat to the power structure and the systems of the experts and the (or an) expert consensus. Hence the Hegelian notion that history (and human psychology) is on a fixed course for the absolute, which of course is The State, and the process of heading for this absolute is the answer to everything. Everything is thus known.  

Locke and Modern Skeptical-Empirical Science are happy to seek discoveries in a universe where there are many unknowns.  

Not knowing is no obstacle, except to a dictator.

And so on. 

Asclepius, god of Medicine, holding a Rod of Asclepius. From 'Mythology of Youth' by Pierre Blanchard 1803

At first sight, I assumed the rooster in the image is an allusion to Plato's Phaedeo (118a):

Then he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said—this was the last thing he uttered—“Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you pay that debt and not neglect to do so?” 

Socrates meaning--rich with allusions--is plain but also cryptic. In the conventional reading, Socrates' last words are meant to be taken ironically; that is, life is a disease for which death is the cure.  But there is a bit more to it.  Click HERE for a discussion.