Health, Disease, and Illness : Concepts in Medicine

by Caplan, Arthur L.; McCartney, James J.; Sisti, Dominic A.; Pellegrino, Edmund D.

• ISBN13: 9781589010147
• ISBN10: 1589010140
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-06-01
• Publisher: Georgetown Univ Pr

Summary

In the 1850s, "Drapetomania" was the medical term for a disease found among black slaves in the United States. The main symptom was a strange desire to run away from their masters. In earlier centuries gout was understood as a metabolic disease of the affluent, so much so that it became a badge of uppercrust honor -- and a medical excuse to avoid hard work. Today, is there such a thing as mental illness, or is mental illness just a myth? Is Alzheimer's really a disease? What is menopause -- a biological or a social construction?Historically one can see that health, disease, and illness are concepts that have been ever fluid. Modern science, sociology, philosophy, even society -- among other factors -- constantly have these issues under microscopes, learning more, defining and redefining ever more exactly. Yet often that scrutiny, instead of leading toward hard answers, only leads to more questions. Health, Disease, and Illness brings together a sterling list of classic and contemporary thinkers to examine the history, state, and future of ever-changing "concepts" in medicine. Divided into four parts -- Historical Discussions; Characterizing Health, Disease, and Illness; Clinical Applications of Health and Disease; and Normalcy, Genetic Disease, and Enhancement: The Future of the Concepts of Health and Disease -- the reader can see the evolutionary arc of medical concepts from the Greek physician Galen of Pergamum (ca. 150 ce) who proposed that "the best doctor is also a philosopher," to contemporary discussions of the genome and morality. The editors have recognized a crucial need for a deeper integration of medicine and philosophy with each other, particularly in an age of dynamicallychanging medical science -- and what it means, medically, philosophically, to be human.

Author Biography

Arthur L. Caplan is Emmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, and the director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. James J. McCartney is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at Villanova University, an associate fellow at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, and an adjunct professor at the Villanova University School of Law. Dominic A. Sisti is a researcher at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, associate ethicist at Holy Redeemer Health System, and adjunct instructor at Villanova University.

Table of Contents

Foreword: Renewing Medicine's Basic Concepts
EDMUND D. PELLEGRINO	xi
PART I: HISTORICAL DISCUSSIONS OF HEALTH, DISEASE, AND ILLNESS
1. From On the Natural Faculties II,	viii
GALEN	5	(2)
2. Diseases of the Soul
MAIMONIDES	7	(4)
3. Prometheus's Vulture: The Renaissance Fashioning of Gout
ROY PORTER AND G.S. ROUSSEAU	11	(17)
4. Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race
SAMUEL A. CARTWRIGHT	28	(12)
5. The Normal and the Pathological-Introduction to the Problem
GEORGES CANGUILHEM	40	(3)
6. The Myth of Mental Illness
THOMAS S. SZASZ	43	(8)
7. The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for Biomedicine
GEORGE L. ENGEL	51	(14)
8. When Do Symptoms Become a Disease?
ROBERT A. ARONOWITZ	65	(12)
PART II: CHARACTERIZING HEALTH, DISEASE, AND ILLNESS
9. On the Distinction between Disease and Illness
CHRISTOPHER BOORSE	77	(13)
10. Malady: A New Treatment of Disease
K. DANNER CLOUSER, CHARLES M. CULVER, AND BERNARD GERT	90	(14)
11. Health: A Comprehensive Concept
ROBERTO MORDACCI AND RICHARD SOBEL	104	(6)
12. The Distinction between Mental and Physical Illness
R.C. KENDELL	110	(7)
13. The "Unnaturalness" of Aging Give Me Reason to Live!
ARTHUR L. CAPLAN	117	(11)
14. Diagnosing and Defining Disease
WINSTON CHIONG	128	(9)
PART III: CLINICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE CONCEPTS OF HEALTH AND DISEASE: CONTROVERSIES/CONSENSUS
15. "Ambiguous Sex"- or Ambivalent Medicine?
ALICE DOMURAT DREGER	137	(16)
16. The Discovery of Hyperkinesis: Notes on the Medicalization of Deviant Behavior
PETER CONRAD	153	(10)
17. Suffering and the Social Construction of Illness: The Delegitimation of Illness Experience in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
NORMA C. WARE	163	(13)
18. The Premenstrual Syndrome: A Brief History
JOHN T.E. RICHARDSON	176	(11)
19. The Politics of Menopause: The "Discovery" of a Deficiency Disease
FRANCES A. McCREA	187	(14)
20. Aging, Culture, and the Framing of Alzheimer Disease
MARTHA HOLSTEIN	201	(20)
PART IV: NORVALCY, GENETIC DISEASE, AND ENHANCEMENT: THE FUTURE OF THE CONCEPTS OF HEALTH AND DISEASE
21. The Medicalization of Aesthetic Surgery
SANDER GILMAN	221	(4)
22. The Quest for Medical Normalcy-Who Needs It?
GEORGE C. WILLIAMS	225	(8)
23. The Concept of Genetic Disease
DAVID MAGNUS	233	(10)
24. Concepts of Disease after the Human Genome Project
ERIC T. JUENGST	243	(20)
25. From "Enhancing Cognition in the Intellectually Intact"
PETER J. WHITEHOUSE, ERIC T. JUENGST, MAXWELL MEHLMAN, AND THOMAS H. MURRAY	263	(5)
26. Treatment, Enhancement, and the Ethics of Neurotherapeutics
PAUL ROOT WOLPE	268	(10)
27. What's Morally Wrong with Eugenics?
ARTHUR L. CAPLAN	278	(11)
Acknowledgments	289	(2)
Contributors	291	(4)
Permissions and Credits	295	(2)
Index	297