Consequences of the Verbal Wars

Abstract

Military metaphors are deeply embedded in the language of medicine and influence thinking and practice. Disease comes to be understood as a thing rather than a process, and diagnosis is the search by the celebrated medical detective for the causative object. As a result, functional illnesses that lack defined physical lesions become less interesting to physicians and the patients with these illnesses may feel abandoned. Methods to search for the locus of disease are increasingly reductionist and ignore the person who is now the bearer of disease rather than a sufferer with impairments of function. MRIs and CAT scans see through the person and computers capture the doctor’s attention. The electronic health record compiles images and numbers but ignores the narrative of the person who is ill. This chapter describes how disease became linked to moral impurity and being imported by foreigners and strangers. Lastly, therapy is misunderstood as restoration to a state of purity.