title: The Ubiquity of Chronic Illness.
abstract: This is a review of five different books dealing with some aspect of what might be termed a "chronic illness" - Alzheimer's disease, lupus, addiction, erectile dysfunction, and leprosy. The array of different subjects examined in these books points to the negotiable limits of this hugely open category. What exactly constitutes an "illness"? Why not use a less biomedical term instead: "disturbance", "problem", or simply "condition"? And how are we to understand "chronic" - simply as the flipside of "acute" or "curable"?
authors.affiliation: a Department of Post-Graduate Studies in Social Anthropology , Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul , Brazil.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fonseca
authors.affiliation: b Department of Anthropology , University of Brasília, CAPES-Brazil Scholar , Brazil.
authors.forename: Soraya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fleischer
authors.affiliation: c Department of Anthropology , State University of Campinas , Brazil.
authors.forename: Taniele
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rui
mesh_terms: D000544:Alzheimer Disease; D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000628:therapy*; D007172:Erectile Dysfunction; D006801:Humans; D007918:Leprosy; D008180:Lupus Erythematosus, Systemic; D008297:Male; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders
keywords: Chronic illness; chronicity; health systems; long-term management; rupture; therapeutic trajectories