This introduction to the special issue on “Medicine, Health, and Publics” argues that a rhetorical understanding of publics offers conceptual, methodological, and practical benefits to health and medical humanities scholars.

‘Chronic fatigue syndrome’ and ‘myalgic encephalomyelitis’ are diagnostic labels that are at the center of ongoing conflicts in the field of health and illness, between doctors, patients, activists, and other interest groups. ‘CFS’ and ‘ME’ have different historical trajectories and are associated with different diagnostic criteria. In many cases, however, they are used interchangeably or synonymously with the umbrella term ‘ME/cfs’. This worsens preexisting conflicts and causes new ones, partly by effecting a confusing array of interpretive possibilities for patients new (...) to the diagnoses and the issues at hand. (shrink)

This essay argues that medical and health humanists interested in the rhetorical work of publics can extend their research by attending to embodiment and infrastructure. In addition to discussing how such strategies are illustrated in the essays appearing in this special issue, I relate them to the rhetorical study of personal health records (PHRs) as described in consumer-directed arguments. I conclude by posing two questions to health and medical humanists: “How do discursive constructions of publics and more specific instantiations of (...) embodied experiences mutually shape each other?” and “What do the infrastructures of health and medical users look like and involve in their enactment?”. (shrink)

This 1998 book contains historical essays about how diseases change their meaning.