Introduction
The history of medicine can be traced back to antiquity in the epoch of where it was a common belief that causation of disease was a direct result of divine intervention. As time progressed, so did the concepts and practice of medicine which shifted to a more scientific and rational approach from a religious or set of quasi-scientific principles. This discourse will examine the idea that the advancements in biomedicine has resulted in a therapeutic encounter in which holistic approaches to treatment are replaced in favour of treatments for specific diseases using the principles contained in Nick Jewson 's essay. The disappearance of the sick-man from medical cosmology thesis is driven by two fundamental ideas, firstly the control over the production of medical knowledge shifted from the patient towards medical investigators, changing the discourse of medical theory from an integrated conception of holism to that of reducing a patient to a constellation of molecules. Secondly, as control over the occupational group of medical investigators …show more content…
As this era of Laboratory Medicine is slowly progressing towards an even further reduced practice of medicine, which I will refer to as Genetic Medicine, science is still yet to determine a causal correlation between genotype and social and physical environments, a major weakness of the sick man thesis.(Nettleton, 2008) (Jewson, 2009) However biological reductionism is not without its merits, upon examination of the patient, a doctor can discern pathology, pathogenesis, aetiology and prognosis from basic observation, an unparalleled and albeit biological perspective of the patient and perhaps ascertain some social
The history of medicine can be traced back to antiquity in the epoch of where it was a common belief that causation of disease was a direct result of divine intervention. As time progressed, so did the concepts and practice of medicine which shifted to a more scientific and rational approach from a religious or set of quasi-scientific principles. This discourse will examine the idea that the advancements in biomedicine has resulted in a therapeutic encounter in which holistic approaches to treatment are replaced in favour of treatments for specific diseases using the principles contained in Nick Jewson 's essay. The disappearance of the sick-man from medical cosmology thesis is driven by two fundamental ideas, firstly the control over the production of medical knowledge shifted from the patient towards medical investigators, changing the discourse of medical theory from an integrated conception of holism to that of reducing a patient to a constellation of molecules. Secondly, as control over the occupational group of medical investigators …show more content…
As this era of Laboratory Medicine is slowly progressing towards an even further reduced practice of medicine, which I will refer to as Genetic Medicine, science is still yet to determine a causal correlation between genotype and social and physical environments, a major weakness of the sick man thesis.(Nettleton, 2008) (Jewson, 2009) However biological reductionism is not without its merits, upon examination of the patient, a doctor can discern pathology, pathogenesis, aetiology and prognosis from basic observation, an unparalleled and albeit biological perspective of the patient and perhaps ascertain some social