Do not peel the birches

"Serious illness and mortality, that most universal, unavoidable, and frightening of human experiences, is the focus of this pioneering study, hailed as a telling and provocative commentary on our times." "As modern medicine has become more scientific and impersonal, a new literary genre has emerged. Pathography is personal narrative that describes experiences of illness, treatment, and sometimes death. Anne Hunsaker Hawkins's sensitive reading of numerous pathographies yields a study of the assumptions, attitudes, and myths that patients and those close to them bring to the medical encounter." "Recommended for medical students and doctors, students of popular culture, sociologists, and the general reader, Reconstructing Illness demonstrates that "only when we hear both the doctor's and the patient's voice will we have a medicine that is truly human.""--BOOK JACKET.