Negotiating illness: doctors, patients, and families in the nineteenth century.
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.
Theriot
N M
NM
University of Louisville, USA.
D001828:Body Image; D002983:Clinical Competence; D005260:Female; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D017008:Negotiating; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011368:Professional-Family Relations; D016387:Women's Health