Time, health, and medicine

"Time is an issue of central concern to the functioning of Western medical care. It is essential both to diagnostic criteria between chronic and acute conditions, and to the organizational flow of medical practice. Yet it has been largely neglected by the social scientific study of health and medicine. In this volume a series of co-ordinated studies demonstrates that examining time as a key component of the social organization of health provides a new and revealing perspective on the sociology of medicine and the individual experience of health and illness." "Individual contributors focus on varying aspects of the management of time by patient, doctor and institution, and on the wider social context of time concerns of family, industry and polity. A recurrent element is the importance of time within the relationship between health, medicine and work. The contrasts and contradictions between the individual's experience of bodily time and the medical exigencies of clock and calendar are explored." "Offering fresh insights into the social scientific analysis of health and medicine, and the study of time from a sociological and anthropological perspective, this book will be of interest to those studying medicine and to the growing area of the social study of time."--BOOK JACKET.