While medical language is soaked in metaphor, and thinking with metaphor is central to
diagnostic work, medicine–that is, medical culture, clinical practice and medical education …

Essayist Susan Sontag alerted us more than 20 years ago to the way in which clusters of
metaphors attach themselves to our discussion of certain diseases, and the influence these …

Most health professionals are unaware of the extent to which aspects of language, such as
metaphor, influence their practice. Sensitivity to metaphor can deepen our understanding of …

For decades it seems that the art has been slipping away from medicine. Like the ancient
Greeks, who lamented the passing of the Golden Age, contemporary physi-cians, educators …

Medicine is traditionally known as an 'art', and not an exact 'science'. Medical images of
clinical signs and pathology were communicated through 'metaphors' in the 19th and early …

Medical discourse is replete with the language of war and such phrases as 'the war on
cancer,''magic bullets,''silver bullets,''the therapeutic armamentarium,''agents of disease,''the …

Psychological counselling, or psychotherapy, is a key component of intervention for many
mental health conditions including mood (eg bi-polar), anxiety (eg obsessive-compulsive) …

As shown throughout this volume, metaphors are regularly used to talk and think about
experiences that are subjective, complex and sensitive in terms of experiences that are less …

Human beings rely on metaphor as a primary cognitive device for interpreting the world
around them. Metaphors figure especially strongly in discourse around health, illness, and …

Like many other disciplines, medicine often resorts to metaphor in order to explain
complicated concepts that are imperfectly understood. But what happens when medicine's …