This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Neurology  • Multiple Sclerosis/ Demyelinating Disease  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

by T. Jock Murray, 580 pp, with illus, paper, $29.95, ISBN 1-888799-80-3, New York, NY, Demos, 2005.

JAMA. 2005;294:376-377.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

After reading Multiple Sclerosis: The History of a Disease, I realized as never before that the history of medicine should be compulsory in any undergraduate medical curriculum. During 20 years of caring for patients on a general internal medicine ward, I have typically had no major problems in making common diagnoses. But such diagnostic accuracy is not possible without the efforts of those who have defined and named specific disorders. As author T. Jock Murray, MD, professor of medical humanities at Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, points out, "[it] should be emphasized that the defining and naming of a disease have many consequences in the lives of those suffering those symptoms. It also can alter public policy, how the health caresystem responds to them, and how they are regarded by others, including their friends and family." Indeed, a disease might seem to come into existence and be accepted only upon . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Xavier Bosch, MD, PhD, Reviewer
Hospital Clínic
University of Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
xavbosch@ub.edu

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?