Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society and Disease

by Robert A. Aronowitz

• ISBN13: 9780521558259
• ISBN10: 0521558255
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-05-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book offers historical essays about how diseases change their meaning. Each of the diseases or etiologic hypotheses in this book has had a controversial and contested history: psychosomatic views of ulcerative colitis, twentieth-century chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease, angina pectoris, risk factors for coronary heart disease, and the type A hypothesis. At the core of these controversies are disagreements among investigators, clinicians, and patients over the best way to deal with what individuals bring to disease. By juxtaposing the history of the different diseases, the author shows how values and interests have determined research programs, public health activities, clinical decisions, and the patient's experience of illness. The approach is novel in its interweaving of historical research and the clinical experiences of the author. It should appeal to an audience of physicians, policy makers, social scientists and the general reader interested in broad intellectual currents in modern medicine.

Author Biography

Robert A. Aronowitz, M.D., is Associate Professor of Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
From Myalgic Encephalitis to Yuppie Flu: A History of Chronic Fatigue Syndromes	19	(20)
The Rise and Fall of the Psychosomatic Hypothesis in Ulcerative Colitis	39	(18)
Lyme Disease: The Social Construction of a New Disease and Its Social Consequences	57	(27)
From the Patient's Angina Pectoris to the Cardiologist's Coronary Heart Disease	84	(27)
The Social Construction of Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors	111	(34)
The Rise and Fall of the Type A Hypothesis	145	(46)
Conclusion	166	(25)
Notes	191	(58)
Index	249