Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine

Persuasion is a key to understanding some of the most difficult-to-solve problems in health and health care--problems like illness anxiety, "contested illnesses," patient noncompliance, and end-of-life decision making. In each case, maintains rhetorical theorist Judy Z. Segal, a revealing question to ask is, "Who is persuading whom of what--and what are the means of persuasion?" Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine explores problems in health and health care that resist conventional medical solutions. Segal analyzes, for example, the reciprocal persuasions in the physician/patient relationship. Patients persuade physicians that they are ill and in need of care; physicians, for their part, seek to persuade patients to adhere to treatments. The intractable problem of a patient's rejection of a doctor's advice, says Segal, can be considered, in part, a rhetorical failure: a failure of persuasion. The first comprehensive study of contemporary health issues grounded in rhetorical principles, [this book] offers critical analysis for scholarly, professional, and lay audiences.