Book cover of The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice

Book description

The Body Multiple is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Body Multiple as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I can no longer think of my internal organs as bounded objects known to medicine. Nor can I think about a disease as a label describing a medical truth. I ask the doctor critically what knowledge their diagnostic tools are producing. It annoys the hell out of my doctors. And it is all this book’s fault.

Annemarie Mol’s philosophical take on how medical knowledge practices create multiple bodies will do the same to you. If Illich’s book makes me think I’m relatively normal, Mol’s book turns that upside down and makes me think the doctors are the ones who need…

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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