Blind to Their Blindness

About this book

For many historians, sociologists, and anthropologists of medicine, "disease" and "illness" are not equivalent. Whereas "disease" denotes the physicians's ostensibly objective criteria, "illness" emphasizes the patient's subjective experience. This dissertation examines that distinction precisely at a point where it breaks down, in the history of a diagnosis called "anosognosia," also known as the denial of illness.