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Negotiating illness: Doctors, patients, and families in the nineteenth century
Author(s) -
Theriot Nancy M.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.1065
Subject(s) - negotiation , reading (process) , mental illness , disease , ideal (ethics) , interpretation (philosophy) , medicine , family medicine , psychology , psychiatry , mental health , sociology , pathology , law , social science , political science , computer science , programming language
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.