Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Part I: Biomedicine and the Body.

Part II: Disease and the Self.

Part III: The Physician and the Patient.

Part IV: Creating Sickness.

Index.

"I found the book an extremely rewarding read and strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in health and illness."Steven P Wainwright, King's College London

Colin Samson is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex where he has taught medical sociology, social policy, cultural studies and American studies since 1990. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the co-editor of The Social Construction of Social Policy (with Nigel South, 1996). He is currently working on a series of studies on the health and human rights of Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

C. Samson, University of Essex