Introduction: Medical Case Histories as Genre: New Approaches

Abstract

This article outlines a number of new approaches in the history of medicine and medical humanities to the study of medical case histories from a genre-theoretical vantage point. Differentiating between morphological and structuralist concepts of genre, the essay proposes the investigation of similarities and differences among specific series of case histories in order to recover evolving, changing, or decaying patterns and practices in texts and communicative acts about human health during different historical epochs, including antiquity, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Romantic and Victorian age. The article highlights the importance of narrative, and thinking in cases, supports the notion of “epistemic genres” and pays special attention to the distinction between example and exemplar. It discerns three interrelated functions of case histories: propaedeutic, instantiative, and singular. The study of case histories as genre helps to overcome disjunctions in the history of literature and medicine and enhances multidisciplinary research

Historical perspectives: a snapshot of women admitted to psychiatric facilities with psychosis or mania after childbirth in the late Victorian and inter‐war periods

“…However, as there is no evidence of the woman's voice in the records, it is very difficult to discern how the woman viewed her admission or her desire to return home. Although the descriptions of the women's symptoms on presentation are similar, a close reading of each woman's case in the records demonstrates that her experience of illness is unique, as can be seen in the four case histories (Engqvist & Nilsson , Class ). The first two case histories present women who were described as becoming well during their admission, whereas the women in the last two case histories died soon after they were admitted.…”

Nobody Dies Alone in the Electronic Patient Record—A Qualitative Analysis of the Textual Practices of Documenting Dying and Death

“…This implies an understanding of the medical texts as productive contributors to the (re)production of the ongoing dialogue that is in constant negotiation with the relatively stable EPR genre (Andersen, 2002; Bakhtin, 1998; Class, 2014; Patton, 2014). We executed an analysis of the selected notes, searching for content and linguistic representations with which to identify tendencies and patterns in the text, as well as omissions.…”

Discussing Patients in Private and in Print: The Records of an Eighteenth‐Century Dispensary

“…Monika Class has highlighted the different roles which case histories can play in the development of medical knowledge: the foundation, or preparation, for a medical theory; the single case offered up as exemplifying a wider truth; and the unusual, the singular, case which did not sit easily with established medical theory. 39…”