How to learn from stories of disease, in three simple steps
Despite the veneer of scientific objectivity, medicine and the medical sciences are built on stories. From therapeutic emplotment and narrative reasoning in clinical encounters (e.g. Cheryl Mattingly’s work) to patient histories and illness narratives (e.g. Arthur Kleinman) to the metaphors we use to describe disease (e.g. Susan Sontag, Emily Martin), stories at once help us…