Many people with persistent symptoms navigate illness without an adequate explanatory framework. The systematic disadvantages that arise from the lack of a collectively shared explanation can be ...

Training healthcare students on topics of psychiatry and mental health is challenging because, besides scientific knowledge, addressing attitudes towards mental health is equally important. In this ...

“Come back as soon as possible”. I (BN) struggled to process the phone conversation I was having with my doctor. The call woke me from a desperately needed nap—the last time I slept had been 30 hours ...

Organ transplantation profoundly enhances survival and quality of life for patients with end-stage organ failure but presents challenges such as lifelong immunosuppression, complications and ...

In the late 19th- and early 20th-century USA, at a time when most physicians were focused on women’s health as it related to their reproductive organs, John Harvey Kellogg offered advice and ...

This review essay critically examines a modern manifestation of the scientific clinical gaze, drawing upon Michel Foucault’s foundational concepts. Using a Swedish medical case involving cultural bias ...

Correspondence to Dr Neil Vickers, Department of English Language and Literature, King's College London WC2R 2LS, UK; neil.vickers{at}kcl.ac.uk If you wish to reuse ...

Chronic diseases are among the leading causes of mortality in the world, the subject of major regional and international efforts to tackle shared risk factors, implement prevention and control ...

Despite shame being recognised as a powerful force in the clinical encounter, it is underacknowledged, under-researched and undertheorised in the contexts of health and medicine. In this paper we make ...

The term ‘zoster’ is nowadays associated with ‘herpes zoster’, the condition resulting from reactivation of the latent varicella-zoster virus which causes shingles. But in antiquity the meaning of ...

Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College, South Kensington, London, UK Correspondence to Diana Davenport, Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine ...

During the last twenty years professional people have seen their autonomy being gradually eroded and the decision making process becoming mechanised. Economic and political forces have contributed to ...