Medical Meaning

Ivan Illich, a philosopher, popularized the term “medicalisation”  in his 1975 book, Limits to medicine: medical nemesis. For a long time, doctors have been called upon to exercise authority beyond therapy, becoming involved in alcoholism, abnormal behavior, stress, anxiety, dementia, old age, child raising, infertility, sexual function and dysfunction, grief, death and mourning, to name a few. Whether we like it or not, medicine has become inextricably intertwined with the ways in which we give meaning to our world.

Be it art, literature, the movies or television, the depiction of medical practice has become integral to our systematic knowledge of our society and its institutions. Nowhere is this more evident than in our language and metaphors. We have come to view society using the medical model as organic systems whose health and vital functions are dependent on the proper functioning of its members and appendages. We view economies as being “sick” or “healthy” with the capability of being “cured.’ In a bidirectional relationship, racism “infects” politics, grows to be a “cancer” on the body politic, while racism is described as being “cancerous.”

No matter how technical the medical language, we have suffused it with cultural meanings. We “imbed” reporters with our troops, “excise” pockets of urban “decay” as we “rehabilitate” our neighborhoods. We are faced with “claustrophobic” office cubicles, deal with “malignant” bosses, confront “post-traumatic stress disorder” and “subconscious” desires. We look at the world “through a jaundiced eye” as we search for a restorative potion for our failing self-esteem. Medicine is reshaping the relations of meaning through which we experience our worlds. What kind of a world would this be if viewed through a different lens than that of health and disease?

Sometimes life seems filled with hidden meanings, or is it simply our attempt to create order out of the apparent chaos that surrounds us? You have to decide which interpretation you prefer. In the meantime, here is -

Umbrella Burlesque

In the far corner of my front closet

a half dozen umbrellas huddle

like performance-weary refugees

of an old-time variety show.

The inner skeleton of one is so rusted

it will no longer open.

Forever shut up, its bright nylon fabric

and fancy wooden handle

belie its enduring stillness.

At its side, another opens easily

but  stays open only for a moment,

quickly collapsing on itself

like a large black bird hastily depluming.

Another, bought on the street for a dollar

during a summer shower,

ejects its square metallic button when its pressed

on the handle, sending it with agitated aplomb

across my cloud-darkened living room,

revealing a pent-up inner spring.

Yet another opens to expose

spokes that precariously poke

through its taut outer membrane.

Torn by a forgotten wind,

its recoiled fabric offers only a fractional shelter.

I am running late, so choose the least

damaged  among them,

inadvertently protecting the most washed up

from being lost later that day.

Gregory A. Abel