Lewin talks about a number of conditions that humans commonly suffer from. He believes that human beings and their illnesses are the products of a long evolutionary history. Because of this, Lewin considers modern medicine as deterrence to human evolution and scientists and doctors should combine the idea of evolution and medicine to create revolutionary treatments he calls “Darwinian medicine”. It is difficult to determine whether the concept of Darwinian medicine holds any weight in the medical world. Lewin’s theory suggests infection, trauma, and genetic diseases should be left untreated in order to help the human body fight and respond naturally; doctors should only intervene if necessary.
(Giddens 1989) This model of health looks at individual physical functioning and describes disease and illness as a result of physical causes such as injury or infections. The model focuses on the treatment rather than the prevention. It does not take into account the role of a person's mind or society in the treatment. (Senior and Viveash 1998) It is for reducing the treating of morbidity of unhealthy, disease conditions and premature death and focuses on the removal of illness through diagnosis and effective treatment which makes it useful for helping ill patients. (Webb and Tossell 1999) In the biomedical model of health a critical
The Western scientific approach to medicine bases on these main features, focusing on the abnormalities in the body, biological factors explain the illness, it examines the cause of ill health through observations and tests, trained health professionals are the ones able to identify and treat the illness, emphasising different treatments medications and other interventions. Health care environments are appropriate places to undergo treatments and the model specifically states that illness is regarded as a temporary condition which can be reversed by the intervention of medical expertise. The bio medical model relates to the functionalist approach of health as it specifies that health is the absences of disease and it’s regarded as dysfunctional for the society as individuals cannot make positive contribution to the running of society. The model does not consider the social and environmental factors of ill health but relays on the scientifically methods to address and diagnose the illness if the illness cannot be diagnosed the individual would be labelled as malingering meaning one will be pretending to be ill for
This model identifies health as the ‘absence of disease’ with specific focus on diagnosing and curing individuals with illnesses such as cancer. The different views which are associated with health results in many policies and practices of the National Health Service (NHS) being put in place. The biomedical model suggests that during times of illness, intervention from health care professionals is necessary. Not only this, but the biomedical model also suggests health is the reason for the absence of many life threatening diseases. It is argued by many sociologists the main purpose of health care is to cure disease through the use of scientifically tested methods purposely created to address diagnosed illnesses.
In this essay I will be discussing the sociological approaches to ill health& health whilst assessing the biomedical & socio-medical issues and linking them to the given scenario. There are four particular approaches that I will be focussing on these are: Functionalism, Marxism, Interactionism and Feminism. The functionalist approach to health & ill health is a statement which was inspired by the work of Talcott Parsons. He concluded that in order for a society to function correctly & effectively all the members within the society must be healthy. Those within the society that were sick would be seen as a barrier that stops society from progressing.
Reflecting the distinction between 'objectivist' and 'subjectivist' approaches to science, the idiographic and the nomothetic represent two contrasting approaches to study methods. Idiographic approaches argue that the ultimate goal of science is to explain individual events; general laws and theories are useful insofar as they help us understand a particular event. By copntrast, nomothetic approaches argue that the ultimate goal is to uncover general truths that cover classes of occurrence. Here, individual instances are of interest primarily as guides in developing a broader understanding. Clinical medicine is largely an idiographic pursuit, and the doctor’s commitment is to the individual patient.
It also tends to rely upon a diagnosis being made, most probably by a member of the medical profession. If we are unaware that we have a disease or if this disease has not been diagnosed, does it mean that we are healthy? (Aggleton 1990) The concept of the power of medicine stems from the biomedical model of health, which originated from the work of Rene Descartes. He suggested that the
Within the field of contemporary medicine, Occam's Razor is utilized in a form otherwise known as diagnostic parsimony, which in turn is a flourishing topic for discussion and debate within the medical field. Diagnostic parsimony advocates that when diagnosing a given injury, ailment, illness, or disease a doctor should strive to look for the fewest possible causes that will account for all the symptoms While diagnostic parsimony is often regarded as a salubrious theory, admission should also be given to the counter-argument modernly known as Hickam's dictum, that succinctly states: "patients can have as many diseases as they damn well please” (Thorburn 256). It's stated that statistically, patients are more likely susceptible to having multiple common
While the definitions seem clear and straightforward, producing useful significant knowledge for nurses and their clients has been challenging faced by nursing scholars. Nursing science refers to discipline-specific knowledge of relationships of human responses in health and illness. Its goal is to understand, explain, and utilize it for the benefit of mankind by using scientific method to provide knowledge for all aspects of nursing. It uses classification of science such as basic, natural, applied to logically, systematically and coherently solve problems and answer question. Nursing philosophy on the other hand is described as a statement of foundational and universal assumptions, belief systems, and principles about the nature of knowledge and nature of existence (McEwen & Willis, 2011, p. 10).
Question 5. To what extent are modernist authors interested in the human body and its senses, and what impact does this have upon their writing During the modernist period, the exploration of the human body, its limits, and the ways in which technology could be used to overcome these limits, became a main theme throughout literature. There was also an interest in the senses of the human body throughout this period. This discussion explores To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolfe, and The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad to offer examples of the how modernist authors were demonstrating interest in the human body and its senses. The focus upon the body can be attributed to the advances in medical technology, which allowed exploration of the body which was previously impossible.