In the "Mind and Body" column in The Boston Globe of August 4, 1996, Madeline Drexler wrote: "Diseases aren't always universal events—we often get sick in the way society tells us to get sick. And just as clothes and cuisines go in and out of style, medical diagnoses and the way we interpret illnesses are fashioned by culture."
Later in the article, Ms. Drexler quoted Dr. Arthur Kleinman, chairman of social medicine at Harvard Medical School, who, in discussing "idioms of distress," had said that once these idioms are sanctioned by the medical establishment, they take on a life of their own. "Cultural representations of illness," he said, "come to affect collective experience."
This article by contributing editor Nathan A. Talbot sheds light on this subject from the perspective of Christian Science.
