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The practice of medicine has advanced dramatically in recent years, but the language used to discuss illness – by medical practitioners, patients and carers – has not kept pace. As a result, clinicians and, just as importantly, patients and their relatives and carers, are not able to communicate clearly in relation to illness. The upshot is misunderstanding and confusion on all sides. In this ground-breaking book, Dr Fergus Shanahan, an eminent gastroenterologist who has practised in Ireland, the United States and Canada, and published widely around the world, looks at memoirs of illness, and outlines the lessons we can learn from a better understanding of the words we use to describe illness. He looks at the ways in which language can act as a barrier with regard to illness, and proposes practical ways in which we can dismantle these barriers. The book is written for the general reader: as Dr Shanahan puts it himself, he is "enough of an expert to be wary of experts". The Language of Illness, part manifesto, part memoir, and part instruction manual, is an appeal for the use of clearer, more holistic language, by all those involved with, and affected by, illness. Like the great American poet-doctor William Carlos Williams, he aims to help us develop a new language by means of which we can develop a new way of living with illness – which is an integral part of the human condition. Put simply, it is a book for all those who care about caring.
What is illness? Is it a physiological dysfunction, a social label, or a way of experiencing the world? How do the physical, social and emotional worlds of a person change when they become ill? And can there be well-being within illness? In this remarkable and thought-provoking book, Havi Carel explores these questions by weaving together the personal story of her own serious illness with insights and reflections drawn from her work as a philosopher. Carel's fresh approach to illness raises some uncomfortable questions about how we all - whether healthcare professionals or not - view the ill and challenges us to become more thoughtful. 'Illness' unravels the tension between the universality of illness and its intensely private, often lonely, nature. It offers a new way of looking at a matter that affects every one of us.
The story of a recovery from a crippling disease and the physician patient partnership that beat the odds by using the patient's own capabilities.
From one of the world's foremost physicians and researchers comes a monumental work that radically redefines conventional conceptions of health and illness to offer new methods for living a long, healthy life.
Creative expression inspired by disease has been criticized as a celebration of victimhood, unmediated personal experience, or just simply bad art. Despite debate, however, memoirs written about illness—particularly AIDS or cancer—have proliferated since the late twentieth century and occupy a highly influential place on the cultural landscape today. In Treatments, Lisa Diedrich considers illness narratives, demonstrating that these texts not only recount and interpret symptoms but also describe illness as an event that reflects wider cultural contexts, including race, gender, class, and sexuality. Diedrich begins this theoretically rigorous analysis by offering examples of midcentury memoirs of tuberculosis. She then looks at Susan Sontag’s Illness As Metaphor, Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “White Glasses,” showing how these breast cancer survivors draw on feminist health practices of the 1970s and also anticipate the figure that would appear in the wake of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s—the “politicized patient.” She further reveals how narratives written by doctors Abraham Verghese and Rafael Campo about treating people with AIDS can disrupt the doctor–patient hierarchy, and she explores practices of witnessing that emerge in writing by Paul Monette and John Bayley. Through these records of intensely personal yet universal experience, Diedrich demonstrates how language both captures and fails to capture these “scenes of loss” and how illness narratives affect the literary, medical, and cultural contexts from which they arise. Finally, by examining the ways in which the sick speak and are spoken for, she argues for an ethics of failure—the revaluation of loss as creating new possibilities for how we live and die. Lisa Diedrich is assistant professor of women’s studies at Stony Brook University.
This volume studies the explanation of illness in various cultural and social contexts. It is essential reading for scholars and practitioners in health communication and health care fields, including nursing, public health, and medicine.
This “brutal and brave” (Booklist) novel transmutes the practice of medicine into a larger exploration of humanity, the meaning of care, and the nature of annihilation—physical, spiritual, or both. A young woman puts on a white coat for her first day as a student doctor. So begins this powerful debut, which follows our unnamed narrator through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, difficult births, sudden deaths, and a budding relationship with a seminarian. In the troubled world of the hospital, where the language of blood tests and organ systems so often hides the heart of the matter, she works her way from one bed to another, from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis, to a child in pain crisis, to a young woman, fading from confusion to aphasia to death. The long hours and heartrending work begin to blur the lines between her new life as a physician and the lifelong traumas she has fled. In brilliant, wry, and biting prose, A History of Present Illness is a boldly honest meditation on the body, the hope of healing in the face of total loss, and what it means to be alive. 2023 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters • A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022 • A Publishers Weekly “Writer to Watch” “A revelation.” –The New York Times
This 1998 book contains historical essays about how diseases change their meaning.
Illness in the Academy investigates the deep-seated, widespread belief among academics and medical professionals that lived experiences outside the workplace should not be sacrificed to the ideal of objectivity those academic and medical professions so highly value. The 47 selections in this collection illuminate how academics bring their intellectual and creative tools, skills, and perspectives to bear on experiences of illness. The selections cross genres as well as bridge disciplines and cultures.
What should I say when I hear that my friend has cancer? How can I help but not get in the way? How do I let my loved ones know what I need? The Etiquette of Illness is a wise, encouraging, and essential guide to navigating the complex terrain of illness. This collection of anecdotes and insights will help those who feel awkward and unsure about responding to a friend, colleague, or relative who is suffering. The book is also for people who are ill and want to engage with their loved ones effectively. We read about a range of people who are dealing with chronic illness, doctor-patient communications, and end-of-life issues-and who are striving to find their way with awareness and compassion. Drawing on her years of counseling people with serious illness, as well as her own experiences with cancer, Susan Halpern presents an insightful book of the utmost relevance for patients, their caregivers, and their family and friends - a group which will, at some point, include all of us.