When literary and political discourses in mid-twentieth century Québec suddenly turned to tropes of illness and disease, nationalist critics deemed the nation that these illness narratives posited to be sick. Public health reports nevertheless attest to the rapidly improving health situation at this same time. Although the medical tropes created a paradox in which the nation is perceived as sicker than it actually is, Québec's novels and political writings nonetheless expose the ways in which the relation of the medicalized body to the nation is challenged and disrupted.