Abstract
Having a concept of ‘health’ is important in the identification, treatment and non-treatment of a wide range of physical and mental conditions. Knowing when to treat, when not to treat and when to cease treating is important for the provision of proper ethical patient care. Appropriate non-intervention can be as important as appropriate intervention. Furthermore, wastefulness—not to mention patient distress—ensues when responses are made needlessly to subtle deviations from the norm. A better understanding of health may help limit unnecessary interventions and limit some of the unrealistic expectations increasingly being placed upon healthcare providers. Furthermore, the goals and limits of individual therapies and of medicine as a whole may become clearer.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Smith R (2009) Trying to redefine health from BMJ Group Blogs 2009. http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2009/12/14/richard-smith-trying-to-redefine-health/. Accessed 11 Nov 2011.
Huber M, Knottnerus JA, Green L, van der Horst H, Jadad AR, Kromhout D, Leonard B, Lorig K, Loureiro MI, van der Meer JWM, Schnabel P, Smith R, van Weel C, Smid H. How should we define health? BMJ. 2011;343:d4163. doi:10.1136/bmj.d4163.
Campbell E, Scadding J, Roberts R. The concept of disease. BMJ. 1979;2:757–62.
Smith R. In search of “non-disease”. BMJ. 2002;324:883–5.
Antonovsky A. Health, stress, and coping. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers; 1980.
Marinker M. Why make people patients? J Med Ethics. 1975;1:81–4.
WHO. Constitution of the World Health Organization. 2006. http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_en.pdf.
Boorse C. On the distinction between disease and illness. Philos Public Aff. 1975;5:49–68.
Boorse C. What a theory of mental health should be. J Theory Soc Behav. 1976;6:61–84.
Boorse C. Health as a theoretical concept. Philos Sci. 1977;44:542–73.
Boorse C. A rebuttal on health. In: Humber J, Almeder K, editors. What is disease? Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 1997. p. 3–134.
Khushf G. An agenda for future debate on concepts of health and disease. Med Health Care Philos. 2007;10(1):19–27.
Hofmann B. Complexity of the concept of disease as shown through rival theoretical frameworks. Theor Med Bioeth. 2001;22(3):211–36.
Nordenfelt L. Health and disease: two philosophical perspectives. J Epidemiol Community Health. 1986;40(4):281–4.
Nordenfelt L. Animal and human health and welfare: a comparative philosophical analysis. Wallingford, CT: CABI; 2006.
Murphy D. Concepts of disease and health. In: Zalta EN, editors. The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Summer 2009 Edition). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/health-disease/. Accessed 11 Nov 2011.
Bynum W. Nosology. In: Bynum W, Porter R, editors. Companion encyclopedia of the history of medicine, vol. 1. London: Routledge; 1993. p. 335–56.
Lewis S. A pathological misunderstanding. Wellcome Hist. 2011;46:6–7.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Annette Lewis for her help in the preparation of the manuscript of this chapter.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lewis, S. (2013). Trying to Make Sense of Health. In: Sturmberg, J., Martin, C. (eds) Handbook of Systems and Complexity in Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4998-0_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4998-0_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-4997-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-4998-0
eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)