Definition
Medical heroism during pandemics involves healthcare personnel engaged in extraordinarily selfless work during times of extraordinary crisis. Whether this qualifies as heroism is open to interpretation based on issues involving social expectations of medical personnel, i.e. the implied social contract between such personnel and society. Accepting the ‘heroism’ label may have adverse consequences, both physical and psychological, for medical personnel.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought a resurgence of interest in Albert Camus’ celebrated novel, La Peste (The Plague) (Camus 1991), the slim post-WWII fictional account of a bubonic plague outbreak in the French-Algerian city of Oran. Often portrayed as a political allegory of fascism or nationalism disguised as an infectious disease, the book reads just fine as a straightforward narrative of how a feared contagion effects individuals and...
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Meisenberg, B. (2023). Medical Heroism During Pandemics: History, Ethics, and Camus. In: Encyclopedia of Heroism Studies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17125-3_184-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17125-3_184-1
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