Doctors and Patients

Abstract

 

For the first time, a book considers the doctor/patient relationship in the long period and from a broad geographical perspective. Historians, anthropologists and doctors reflect on the factors that, from the Classical age until the present, have altered the care relationship and the power relations embedded within it. The book also highlights that communication and narration, understood as constitutive aspects of care, are the elements which link the past to the present. From the encounter between religion and medicine to the centuries-long struggle between doctors and patients in defence of their respective positions, from medical dramas to efforts to humanize medicine, the book describes the doctor/patient relationship in all its cultural, transnational and transtemporal dimensions.

 

Indice

 Introduction

Doctors and patients between historiography and medical humanities (Maria Malatesta)

Historical paths

1. Medicines, doctors, and patients in Greek and Roman society (Daniela Rigato)

2. Two actors in the medieval therapeutic relation (Tommaso Duranti)

3. Doctor and patient in the modern age: words, gazes and gestures (Claudia Pancino)

4. Between law and profession: the origins of informed consent (1840-1900) (Emmanuel Betta)

Cultures, communication and representations

5. Culture, health and communication in the doctor/patient relationship: theory and practice (Ivo Quaranta)

6. How to improve the doctor-patient relationship: the role of the symptoms and food diary (Davide Festi, Carolina Poli, Francesca Pasqui)

7. Negotiating knowledge about illness through television (Valentina Cappi)

8. Hospices and end-of-life care: institutional models and historical-anthropological aspects (Giuliana Gemelli)

9. Between tradition and innovation: blended values and approaches in a palliative care ward in Saudi Arabia (Omar Bortolazzi)