Health, Disease, and Illness

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 dynamically changing medical science-and what it means, medically, philosophically, to be human.

Auteur

Arthur L. Caplan is Emmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics, Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics, and 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.

Contenu

Foreword: Renewing Medicine's Basic ConceptsEdmund D. Pellegrino

Part I: Historical Discussions of Health, Disease, and Illness

1. From "On the Natural Faculties II, VIII"Galen

2. Diseases of the SoulMaimonides

3. Prometheus's Vulture: The Renaissance Fashioning of Gout Roy Porter and G.S. Rousseau

4. Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race Samuel A. Cartwright

5. The Normal and the Pathological-Introduction to the ProblemGeorges Canguilhem

6. The Myth of Mental Illness Thomas S. Szasz

7. The Need for a New Medical Model: A Challenge for BiomedicineGeorge L. Engel

8. When Do Symptoms Become a Disease?Robert A. Aronowitz Part II: Characterizing Health, Disease, and Illness

9. On the Distinction between Disease and Illness Christopher Boorse

10. Malady: A New Treatment of Disease K. Danner Clouser, Charles M. Culver, and Bernard Gert

11. Health: A Comprehensive Concept Roberto Mordacci and Richard Sobel

12. The Distinction between Mental and Physical IllnessR. E. Kendell

13. The "Unnaturalness" of Aging-Give Me Reason to Live!Arthur L. Caplan

14. Diagnosing and Defining DiseaseWinston Chiong

Part III: Clinical Applications of Concepts of Health and Disease: Controversies/Consensus

15. "Ambiguous Sex"-or Ambivalent Medicine?Alice Domurat Dreger

16. The Discovery of Hyperkinesis: Notes on the Medicalization of Deviant BehaviorPeter Conrad

17. Suffering and the Social Construction of Illness: The Delegitimation of Illness Experience in Chronic Fatigue SyndromeNorma C. Ware

18. The Premenstrual Syndrome: A Brief HistoryJohn T. E. Richardson

19. The Politics of Menopause: The "Discovery" Of A Deficiency DiseaseFrances B. McCrea

20. Aging, Culture, and the Framing of Alzheimer DiseaseMartha Holstein

Part IV: Normalcy, Genetic Disease, and Enhancement: The Future of the Concepts of Health and Disease

21. The Medicalization of Aesthetic SurgerySander Gilman

22. The Quest for Medical Normalcy-Who Needs It?George C. Williams

23. The Concept of Genetic DiseaseDavid Magnus

24. Concepts of Disease after the Human Genome ProjectEric T. Juengst

25.From "Enhancing Cognition in the Intellectually Intact"Peter J. Whitehouse, Eric T. Juengst, Maxwell Mehlman, and Thomas H. Murray

26. Treatment, Enhancement, and The Ethics of NeurotherapeuticsPaul Root Wolpe

27. What's Morally Wrong with Eugenics?Arthur L. Caplan

ContributorsIndex