Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their wayBut humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones.

It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did notBased on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring.

Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness NarrativesIt remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.