Imagining Illness


Book Description

Analyzing the visual culture of public health from the nineteenth century to the present.




Imaging and Imagining Illness


Book Description

Medical imaging technologies can help diagnose and monitor patients' diseases, but they do not capture the lived experience of illness. In this volume, Devan Stahl shares her story of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis with the aid of magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Although clinically useful, Stahl did not want these images to be the primary way she or anyone else understood her disease or what it is like to live with MS. With the help of her printmaker sister, Darian Goldin Stahl, they were able to reframe these images into works of art. The result is an altogether different image of the ill body. Now, the Stahls open up their project to four additional scholars to help shed light on the meaning of illness and the impact medical imaging can have on our cultural imagination. Using their insights from the medical humanities, literature, visual culture, philosophy, and theology, the scholars in this volume advance the discourse of the ill body, adding interpretations and insights from their disciplinary fields.




Imaging and Imagining Illness


Book Description

Medical imaging technologies can help diagnose and monitor patients’ diseases, but they do not capture the lived experience of illness. In this volume, Devan Stahl shares her story of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis with the aid of magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Although clinically useful, Stahl did not want these images to be the primary way she or anyone else understood her disease or what it is like to live with MS. With the help of her printmaker sister, Darian Goldin Stahl, they were able to reframe these images into works of art. The result is an altogether different image of the ill body. Now, the Stahls open up their project to four additional scholars to help shed light on the meaning of illness and the impact medical imaging can have on our cultural imagination. Using their insights from the medical humanities, literature, visual culture, philosophy, and theology, the scholars in this volume advance the discourse of the ill body, adding interpretations and insights from their disciplinary fields.




It's All in Your Head


Book Description

A neurologist explores the very real world of psychosomatic illness. Most of us accept the way our heart flutters when we set eyes on the one we secretly admire, or the sweat on our brow as we start the presentation we do not want to give. But few of us are fully aware of how dramatic our body's reactions to emotions can sometimes be. Take Pauline, who first became ill when she was fifteen. What seemed at first to be a urinary infection became joint pain, then food intolerances, then life-threatening appendicitis. And then one day, after a routine operation, Pauline lost all the strength in her legs. Shortly after that her convulsions started. But Pauline's tests are normal; her symptoms seem to have no physical cause whatsoever. Pauline may be an extreme case, but she is by no means alone. As many as a third of men and women visiting their GP have symptoms that are medically unexplained. In most, an emotional root is suspected and yet, when it comes to a diagnosis, this is the very last thing we want to hear, and the last thing doctors want to say. In It's All in Your Head consultant neurologist Dr Suzanne O'Sullivan takes us on a journey through the very real world of psychosomatic illness. She takes us from the extreme -- from paralysis, seizures and blindness -- to more everyday problems such as tiredness and pain. Meeting her patients, she encourages us to look deep inside the human condition. There we find the secrets we are all capable of keeping from ourselves, and our age-old failure to credit the intimate and extraordinary connection between mind and body.




Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History


Book Description

Throughout human history illness has been socially interpreted before its range of meanings could be understood and disseminated. Writers of diverse types have been as active in constructing these meanings as doctors, yet it is only recently that literary traditions have been recognized as a rich archive for these interpretations. These essays focus on the methodological hurdles encountered in retrieving these interpretations, called 'framing' by the authors. Framing and Imagining Disease in Cultural History aims to explain what has been said about these interpretations and to compare their value.




Somatic Fictions


Book Description

This book focuses on the centrality of illness—particularly psychosomatic illness—as an imaginative construct in Victorian culture. It shows how illness shaped the terms through which people perceived relationships between body and mind, self and other, private and public, and how Victorians tried to understand and control their world through a process of physiological and pathological definition.




Imagining Robert


Book Description

"Imagining Robert" is the most honest book to date on the lives of the millions of families that must cope, day by day and year by year, over the course of a lifetime, with a condition for which, in most cases, there is no cure. By rendering his brother's mental illness in all its complexity and mystery, Jay Neugeboren has shown how even the grimmest of lives can be sustained by the power of love




Diseases of the Imagination and Imaginary Disease in the Early Modern Period


Book Description

"The early modern period was arguably the greatest 'age of the imagination' in Europe, and certainly the period in which the powers attributed to that faculty had the greatest consequences - both in theory and in ordinary people's lives. Theologians and physicians debated the reality of witchcraft (no simple battle between Religion and Science, as believers and doubters could be found on both sides); the existence and pathology of werewolves and vampires; the role of the imagination in influencing the unborn child and in causing disease even in remote others. The essays in this volume, by established and emerging scholars from diverse intellectual and cultural traditions, explore Latin and vernacular, philosophical, medical, poetic, dramatic, epistolary, and juridical sourcesto expose the tangled conceptual roots of our modern aff ective, anxiety and somatoform disorders. (some of the content)"--OCLC.







The Invisible Kingdom


Book Description

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION Named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by NPR, The New Yorker, Time, and Vogue “Remarkable.” –Andrew Solomon, The New York Times Book Review "At once a rigorous work of scholarship and a radical act of empathy.”—Esquire "A ray of light into those isolated cocoons of darkness that, at one time or another, may afflict us all.” —The Wall Street Journal "Essential."—The Boston Globe A landmark exploration of one of the most consequential and mysterious issues of our time: the rise of chronic illness and autoimmune diseases A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: these are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier. Drawing on her own medical experiences as well as a decade of interviews with doctors, patients, researchers, and public health experts, O’Rourke traces the history of Western definitions of illness, and reveals how inherited ideas of cause, diagnosis, and treatment have led us to ignore a host of hard-to-understand medical conditions, ones that resist easy description or simple cures. And as America faces this health crisis of extraordinary proportions, the populations most likely to be neglected by our institutions include women, the working class, and people of color. Blending lyricism and erudition, candor and empathy, O’Rourke brings together her deep and disparate talents and roles as critic, journalist, poet, teacher, and patient, synthesizing the personal and universal into one monumental project arguing for a seismic shift in our approach to disease. The Invisible Kingdom offers hope for the sick, solace and insight for their loved ones, and a radical new understanding of our bodies and our health.