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Social History of Medicine 2007 20(3):525-540; doi:10.1093/shm/hkm076
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. All rights reserved

The Patient's View Meets the Clinical Gaze

Flurin Condrau*

* Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester, Simon Building, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. E-mail: F.Condrau{at}manchester.ac.uk


  Abstract

Roy Porter's 1985 article on ‘The Patient's View’ is the starting point for a methodological and historical reflection on the patient in medical history. This article gains its inspiration from the fact that to the present day, the history of patients as an intellectual project has not found much reflection. Old categories, such as patient, knowledge and disease, all need to be revisited and rethought. It sketches out several arenas where this debate will have to take place and contrasts Porter's patient's view with David Armstrong's writings on the constructed patient. It goes on to discuss the project of social history of medicine to begin to place Porter in the context of the discipline and closes with some comments on the political context of patients' history in the 1980s which coincided with the start of governmental reforms in the NHS intended to strengthen the patient's role.

Keywords: patients; disease; knowledge; Foucault; Porter; intellectual history; power; politics


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