A disease is a particular abnormal condition that adversely affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism and is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that are associated with specific signs and symptoms. A disease may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions. For example, internal dysfunctions of the immune system can produce a variety of different diseases, including various forms of immunodeficiency, hypersensitivity, allergies, and autoimmune disorders.
Susan Lee Sontag was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in 1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), as well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992), and In America (1999).
Max Gerson was a German-born American physician who developed the Gerson therapy, a dietary-based alternative cancer treatment that he claimed could cure cancer and most chronic, degenerative diseases. Gerson therapy involves a plant-based diet with coffee enemas, ozone enemas, dietary supplements and raw calf liver extract, the latter was discontinued in the 1980s after patients were hospitalized for bacterial infections.
The Volcano Lover is an historical novel by Susan Sontag, published in 1992. Set largely in Naples, it focuses upon Emma Hamilton, her marriage to Sir William Hamilton, the scandal relating to her affair with Lord Nelson, her abandonment, and her descent into poverty. The title comes from William Hamilton's interest in volcanoes, and his investigations of Mount Vesuvius.
On Photography is a 1977 collection of essays by American writer Susan Sontag. The book originated from a series of essays Sontag published in the New York Review of Books between 1973 and 1977.
Alice James was an American diarist, sister of novelist Henry James and philosopher and psychologist William James. Her relationship with William was unusually close, and she seems to have been badly affected by his marriage. James suffered lifelong health problems that were generally dismissed as hysteria in the style of the day. She is best known for her published diaries.
Shirley Ardell Mason was an American art teacher who was reported to have dissociative identity disorder. Her life was purportedly described, with adaptations to protect her anonymity, in 1973 in the book Sybil, subtitled The True Story of a Woman Possessed by 16 Separate Personalities. Two films of the same name were made, one released in 1976 and the other in 2007. Both the book and the films used the name Sybil Isabel Dorsett to protect Mason's identity, though the 2007 remake stated Mason's name at its conclusion.
A chronic condition is a health condition or disease that is persistent or otherwise long-lasting in its effects or a disease that comes with time. The term chronic is often applied when the course of the disease lasts for more than three months. Common chronic diseases include diabetes, functional gastrointestinal disorder, eczema, arthritis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, autoimmune diseases, genetic disorders and some viral diseases such as hepatitis C and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. An illness which is lifelong because it ends in death is a terminal illness. It is possible and not unexpected for an illness to change in definition from terminal to chronic. Diabetes and HIV for example were once terminal yet are now considered chronic due to the availability of insulin for diabetics and daily drug treatment for individuals with HIV which allow these individuals to live while managing symptoms.
Silvano Arieti was a psychiatrist regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia. He received his M.D. from the University of Pisa and left Italy soon after, due to the increasingly antisemitic racial policies of Benito Mussolini.
The Apollonian and the Dionysian are philosophical and literary concepts represented by a duality between the figures of Apollo and Dionysus from Greek mythology. Its popularization is widely attributed to the work The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche, though the terms had already been in use prior to this, such as in the writings of poet Friedrich Hölderlin, historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, and others. The word Dionysian occurs as early as 1608 in Edward Topsell's zoological treatise The History of Serpents. The concept has since been widely invoked and discussed within Western philosophy and literature.
Through its effect on the world's population and major artists in various fields, tuberculosis has appeared in many forms in human culture. The disease was for centuries associated with poetic and artistic qualities in its sufferers, and was known as "the romantic disease". Many artistic figures, including the poet John Keats, the composer Frédéric Chopin and the artist Edvard Munch, either had the disease or were close to others who did.
AIDS and Its Metaphors is a 1989 work of critical theory by Susan Sontag. In this companion book to her Illness as Metaphor (1978), Sontag extends her arguments about the metaphors attributed to cancer to the AIDS crisis. Sontag explores how attitudes to disease are formed in society, and attempts to deconstruct them.
Insight-oriented psychotherapy is a category of psychotherapies that rely on conversation between the therapist and the client. It involves developing the patient's understanding of past and present experiences, how they are related to each other and the effect they have on the patient's interpersonal relationships, emotions and symptoms. Insight-oriented psychotherapy can be an intensive process, wherein the client must spend multiple days per week with the therapist.
Supportive psychotherapy is a psychotherapeutic approach that integrates various therapeutic schools such as psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioral, as well as interpersonal conceptual models and techniques.
Camille Anna Paglia is an American academic, social critic and feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.
Breast cancer awareness is an effort to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of breast cancer through education about screening, symptoms, and treatment. Supporters hope that greater knowledge will lead to earlier detection of breast cancer, which is associated with higher long-term survival rates, and that money raised for breast cancer will produce a reliable, permanent cure.
Suleika Jaouad is an American writer, advocate, and motivational speaker. She is the author of the "Life, Interrupted" column in The New York Times and has also written for Vogue, Glamour, NPR's All Things Considered and Women's Health. Her 2021 memoir Between Two Kingdoms was a New York Times Best Seller.
War metaphors are often used to describe a person's experience with cancer. Those who have died are said to have lost their "battle with cancer", while the living are described as "fighting cancer".
The causes of Jane Austen's death, which occurred on July 18, 1817 at the age of 41, following an undetermined illness that lasted about a year, have been discussed retrospectively by doctors whose conclusions have subsequently been taken up and analyzed by biographers of Jane Austen, one of the most widely read and acclaimed of English writers.
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care is a 2019 memoir by the American author, poet, and essayist Anne Boyer. The book chronicles Boyer's experience as a breast cancer patient. Boyer takes an untraditional approach to the standard illness narrative, by weaving together her personal journey as a patient in treatment with reflections on art and literature, and critiques of capitalism and the medical industry.
