Medicalization
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Ivan Illich, (1975) Limits to medicine: Medical nemesis, the expropriation of health. — this book was the most influential early example of the usage of the term medicalization. Illich, a philosopher, argued that the medical establishment posed a "threat to health" through the production of clinical, social, and cultural "iatrogenesis". For Illich, Western medicine's notion of issues of healing, ageing, and dying as medical illnesses effectively "medicalized" human life, rendering individuals and societies less able to deal with these "natural" processes. Illich's assessment of professional medicine, and particularly his use of the term medicalization, quickly caught on, as critiques of the expansive categories of illness and health appeared throughout a vast array of professional literatures throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
