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.
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 Disease21. 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
