Disease and Health in the Cultural Context

Abstract

Neither disease nor health are concepts that have ever been strictly and unambiguously defined in terms of finite sets of observable referential phenomena. Medical textbooks rarely devote references to the subjects, and it seems perfectly possible for a medical professional to practice medicine and treat illnesses without possessing or using an overarching concept of disease. Yet we intuitively know that concepts of disease and health—probably originating in the earliest categorizations of the phenomenal world developed by humankind—are rooted in the culture and contain strata of rich meanings and connotations transmitted over the generations. In no culture have such meanings and connotations been entirely static; however, it is in the present technological culture that the rate of change is unprecedented. The notion of disease has accrued mutations in the course of the last two centuries by absorbing new elements in each consecutive era of social and scientific history. It is more than likely that further metamorphosis is in the making, partly as a result of current developments in the biomedical and life sciences, but perhaps more importantly as a consequence of social and cultural change.