Abstract

HIDALGO-BALSERA, Agustín; GONZALEZ-GARCIA, María; GONZALEZ-RODRIGUEZ, Sara  and  BORDALLO-LANDA, Javier. Around the concept of health and disease. A dialogue between Medicine, Literature and Philosophy. Rev Med Cine [online]. 2022, vol.18, n.4, pp.377-390.  Epub Mar 20, 2023. ISSN 1885-5210.  https://dx.doi.org/10.14201/rmc.30624.

A problem of medicine is the epistemic uncertainties that are inherent to it, due to its both conceptual elaboration methods and those it takes from the natural and social sciences on which they are based on. Consequently, medicine is not a science, although its basis are scientifically increasing. Given that there are biological, psychological and sociological aspects in medicine in general, and in the concepts of health and disease, and in the reality of patients, there is nothing special about invoking philosophy and literature for the elaboration of theories of medicine. In the present article we consider some of these approaches, the limitations of the biological and reductionist conception of medicine are highlighted and it is estimated that it acquires greater explanatory power of the concepts of health and disease when the human and social aspects of theory and medicine are considered. In addition, literature provides a social image of medicine and of patients that we should integrate into the concepts of health, disease and patient. Finally, we draw attention to a process that seems to have disappeared from medical practice, such as convalescence and the need for a total restoration of health due to the risk, as the Hippocratic aphorism warns, that the residues that remain from disease, relapse often occurs.

Keywords : literature; philosophy; medical training; health; disease; patients; health systems.

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