The posts in What These Works Say comprise reviews and analyses of works from the Humanities selected for their focus on illness experiences beyond what biomedical sources typically provide. The works selected address both the experience of illness diseases and disorders cause (e.g., pain, disability, disorientation), and related challenges (e.g., health care access, psychological manifestations, relationship disruptions). The posts consist of three sections: 1) a brief take on the key perspectives the work offers about disease and illness (According to the Arts); 2) a summary of the whole work (Synopsis); and 3) how the work renders, explains, or expands on the illness experiences or disease processes it covers (Analysis).
According to the art: A central concern of the novel is the role and operation of asylums in Western nations during most of the twentieth-century, with particular attention to how asylums affected the plights of women. The story is a literary representation of the period for asylums that corresponds with social historian Michel Foucault’s analysis in his book, Madness and Civilization.
According to the art: Michel Foucault digs into the history of madness from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century western Europe and the U.S. This period corresponds roughly from the time when “madmen were allowed to wander in the open countryside,” through a period of exclusionary practices, and until the “birth of the asylum.”
According to the art: The book is a deep and ranging analysis of insomnia causes, consequences, and fixes in the midst of daily life as the author experiences it. She emphasizes the effects insomnia has on her being.
According to the art: Stegenga offers a book-length and formal philosophical explanation using Bayes Theorem on why “we should have little confidence in the effectiveness of medical interventions.”
According to the art: The story follows the plight of a young, diabetic woman experiencing a retinal hemorrhage and what comes after clinically and socially. What a retinal hemorrhage is like as it occurs and what the prospect of blindness is like afterward are featured. How both can become a proof of love is intertwined.
According to the art: To adapt Beth Macy’s expansive book about the opioid crisis to the format of a dramatic series, the creator, Danny Strong, had to limit his scope around the fiendish Purdue Pharma sales and marketing practices and the people they affected directly.
According to the art: This novel is for readers who want to go deep into what people—family, organ recipients, hospital staff—experience during organ transplantation, from the time of an event making organ transplantation possible to the time a donated organ is implanted. In particular, philosophical concepts and language constraints are considered.
According to the art: The book might have been better titled, The Problems of Alzheimer’s, to better reflect the multiple dimensions Jason Karlawish takes into account in his study of the disease. Karlawish functions more as critic than cheerleader, and more as an arbiter than polemicist. He is only a polemicist when criticizing the polemics around various controversies he considers.
According to the art: The novel is about a family making its way through life dodging obstacles in the forms of illness, injury, death, and grief. The obstacles dominate the book, and are described in unusual, clever, and striking ways.
According to the art: The movie shows how a long-term gay couple faces the onset of dementia as any heterosexual couple does, but does not consider how it could be different.