Plague Doctors

Plague Doctors highlights culturally based differences between French and American medicine, not only in health care delivery, but in the way each system constructs the interaction between disease and the human body. This work challenges the assumption that biomedicine is uniform across the western world. The author, a medical doctor and anthropologist, provides an ethnographic look into the daily experiences of physicians and researchers, examining how members of the French and American medical communities construct their models of AIDS through discourse and practice. The book is based on a comparative study of two AIDS clinics, one in Chicago and the other in Paris. Participant observation conducted at the clinics and interviews with physicians and researchers outside the sites yielded important insights into the world of AIDS medicine.

The book contains no figures.

Plague Doctors highlights culturally based differences between French and American medicine, not only in health care delivery, but in the way each system constructs the interaction between disease and the human body.

Swailem S. Hennein

This is an ethnographic investigation of the AIDS phenomenon, comparing the French and American biomedical experience in two clinics, presenting both process and findings of research. The researcher is a trained anthropologist/physician who conducted the study as participant/observer and interviewed 74 informants: clinicians, researchers, and graduate research students, many of whom served in other sites. The work attempts to fill gaps in our understanding of AIDS and to deal with the dynamics of interaction among several biomedical inner and societal factors. The study limits itself to the experience, discourse, and perceptions of AIDS professionals. This research-based scholarly book is essential reading for a wide range of persons. The medical specialist and the internist, nurse and public health professional, researcher and international health analyst, and the pharmacist and student as well as educated AIDS patients will find in it new perspectives and valuable information. It explains why we, in the face of AIDS, act and think the way we do. The tables and glossary are useful for purposes of diagnosis and communication. The bibliography is a good selection from among a very large number of publications. The table of contents could use some detail, and the title itself could be more coherent. The work makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of AIDS and of ourselves as well. It demonstrates how even our definitions of a disease are influenced by preconceived ideas, ideals, and modalities, and how the cultural and social realities, not least of which is the economy and politics, shape our definitions and management of disease. In turn, the findings show how AIDS hasbeen shaping public and professional discourse, medical histories, scientific investigation, and in-group interaction. AIDS has changed and is changing drastically both professional and patient relationships.

JAMIE L. FELDMAN has a doctorate in anthropology and is a resident physician in Family Practice at Lutheran General Hospital in Illinois.