Upshur, Ross (Advisor)
Duffee, Charlotte Mary (Author)
My dissertation explores the history and philosophy of patient suffering in 20th-century American medicine. Chapter One argues that historians of medicine colloquially synonymize suffering with related phenomena, such as pain, which risks treating suffering as a transhistorical object. That is a problem, first because suffering appears to be historically distinct, and second because neglecting it has undesirable consequences in the history of medicine and beyond. In response, Chapters Two and Three modestly enlarge the historical scholarship by presenting an intellectual and cultural history of American physician Eric Cassell’s (1928–2021) influential theory of suffering. This narrative argues that legal influences in Cassell’s early intellectual development and the medico-legal milieu in which he wrote provided the impetus, concepts, and language for his seminal theory. Chapter Four brings my historical findings to bear on current philosophical debates over Cassell’s view. Some critics argue that his account is too narrowly focused on damage, an objection I contextualize historically using the legal descriptions of suffering that influenced him by way of an explosion in medical malpractice lawsuits. My historical research thus lends credence to existing philosophical critiques. To further reinforce these critiques, I also introduce a case of suffering excluded by Cassell’s narrow account, which I call ‘paradoxical purposes.’ On the basis of this exclusion, I conclude that his view does not exhaust suffering as he intended. To rectify this shortcoming, Chapter Five amends his theory in two different ways. Both locate personal integrity, which Cassell says suffering affects, on a spectrum that ranges by ‘existential degrees.’ I refer to the lower end of this spectrum as ‘local suffering,’ which includes paradoxical purposes, whereas Cassell’s focus is on the higher end, ‘global suffering.’ Chapter Six explores two ways scholars can theorize about suffering along this spectrum. One exhausts suffering in general accounts, which I refer to as ‘monistic theories.’ The other involves a multiplicity of narrower models aimed at types of suffering, which I call ‘pluralistic theories.’ Next, I associate these theories with the conceptual questions to which they are most relevant in a bid to facilitate greater collaboration among theorists.
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Article
Bourke, Joanna;
(2012)
Pain, Sympathy and the Medical Encounter between the Mid-Eighteenth and the Mid-Twentieth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001213111/)
Book
Bourke, Joanna;
(2014)
The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers
(/isis/citation/CBB001202302/)
Article
Tudor M. Baetu;
(2020)
Pain in psychology, biology and medicine: Some implications for pain eliminativism
(/isis/citation/CBB031375773/)
Book
Wolf, Jacqueline H.;
(2009)
Deliver Me from Pain: Anesthesia and Birth in America
(/isis/citation/CBB000951145/)
Article
Rogers, Naomi;
(2008)
“Silence Has Its Own Stories”: Elizabeth Kenny, Polio and the Culture of Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB000774305/)
Article
Elisabetta Basso Lorini;
(2017)
The erudite humility of the historian: the ‘critical epistemology’ of Georges Lantéri-Laura
(/isis/citation/CBB521505204/)
Thesis
Tousignant, Noemi R.;
(2006)
Pain and the Pursuit of Objectivity: Pain-Measuring Technologies in the UnitedStates, c. 1890--1975
(/isis/citation/CBB001561511/)
Book
Boddice, Rob;
(2014)
Pain and Emotion in Modern History
(/isis/citation/CBB001202301/)
Article
Laura M. Carpenter;
(2020)
If You Prick Us: Masculinity and Circumcision Pain in the United States and Canada, 1960–2000
(/isis/citation/CBB219337276/)
Book
Ana Carden-Coyne;
(2014)
The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War
(/isis/citation/CBB307057430/)
Book
Skloot, Rebecca;
(2010)
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
(/isis/citation/CBB438514916/)
Book
Ludmerer, Kenneth M.;
(2015)
Let Me Heal: The Opportunity to Preserve Excellence in American Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001510102/)
Article
Letts, Melinda;
(2014)
Rufus of Ephesus and the Patient's Perspective in Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001202234/)
Book
Muriel R. Gillick;
(2017)
Old and Sick in America: The Journey through the Health Care System
(/isis/citation/CBB072704397/)
Article
Eve-Riina Hyrkäs;
(2021)
‘A transverse scar on the neck’ – Psychosomatic approach in the differential diagnosis and surgical treatment of hyperthyroidism in post-war Finland
(/isis/citation/CBB391649241/)
Article
Tousignant, Noémi;
(2011)
The Rise and Fall of the Dolorimeter: Pain, Analgesics, and the Management of Subjectivity in Mid-Twentieth-Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB001034266/)
Thesis
Gabriel Yuval Schaffzin;
(2018)
The Emergence of Pain Quantification and Visualization in the Computation Culture of Cold War Era United States
(/isis/citation/CBB854675562/)
Chapter
Manetti, Daniella;
(2009)
The Role of Doxography in the Anonymous Londinensis
(/isis/citation/CBB001021745/)
Chapter
Tousignant, Noemi;
(2014)
A Quantity of Suffering: Measuring Pain as Emotion in the Mid-Twentieth Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB001202328/)
Article
Chiara Thumiger;
(2018)
A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought
(/isis/citation/CBB530655622/)
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