Negotiating illness: Doctors, patients, and families in the nineteenth century

✍ Scribed by Nancy M. Theriot

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 118 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/jhbs.1065

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

This article is based on medical literature published in American and British monographs and medical journals in which physician‐authors utilized case histories of women's nervous and mental disease and related gynecological complaints. I argue that the interaction of physicians, patients, and families was a relationship in which women patients contributed to the formation of medical knowledge and forged a modern sense of body and self. After an introductory section on reading case studies, I call attention to the ways in which physicians, patients, and patients' families educated each other about wellness and illness, which formed the basis of physicians' interpretation of disease. Next, I point out how the case histories structured an ideal script for doctor, patient, and family, based on physicians' sympathetic authority and patients' willingness to tell and show all. And finally, I suggest that the doctor–patient dialogue encouraged women patients to see themselves as medically manageable bodies and as individuals separate from families. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.