![]() ![]() ![]() 6 His mother was sure it was her prayer that did it. 3, 4 The wisdom of repeatedly calling a child brave has since been challenged by a long-term cardiac patient, 5 although I maintain that my short-term use of the term may have helped this boy develop and maintain his resilience. I would talk to this boy like a football coach, told him he was brave, but I avoided military metaphors. I would tell them both I would promise to send them home if we could not. His father stayed the whole time and would ask me in front of his son if we could cure him. Our patient ‘won’ but developed a lung infection with a saprophytic fungus, which disseminated and almost killed him. 3 He and his friends found a dead rat and dared each other how closely they could sniff it. Our infectious disease team cared for a teenage boy transferred from a remote Pacific Island with a devastating illness. War is no more appropriate as an analogy for patients suffering serious infections. Nor have we shaken off the Romans: we may call a study group a cohort, but the name comes from cohors, a unit in the Roman army. Both oncologists and infectious disease specialists talk of finding the perfect treatment as a search for the ‘magic bullet’. the war against tuberculosis or the war against human immunodeficiency virus). The term ‘war against infectious disease’ is used in a person-specific (people talk of fighting off the flu) and a disease-specific sense (e.g. A paediatric oncologist suggested a more collaborative and optimistic metaphor might be a sporting one: we are a team striving together. Many parents find comfort in thinking of their child as a fighter, a battler, but framing therapy as a battle may put the onus on the child: if things are not going well, the child may feel at fault. 2 War is a scary concept: people die in wars. ![]() Yet using the metaphor of battle and war to children with cancer may cause harm. Should we use military metaphors when talking to patients? Patients are often told they have to fight a battle against cancer. Richard Nixon started talking about the war of cancer in the 1970s when he introduced enhanced funding for cancer research. The ‘war against cancer’ is a common metaphor, both at an administrative and at an individual level. Mind you, he did live in France at the same time as Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he worshipped, so he has some excuse.Ījax and Hector portrayed on a Greek amphora, 540 BC. In the 19th century, French chemist Louis Pasteur, who contributed so much to understanding infections and would develop vaccines against rabies and anthrax, often used military metaphors of disease. In 17th-century England, physician Thomas Sydenham of Sydenham's chorea fame wrote of ‘eradicating’ diseases of their ‘annihilation’ and of the need to ‘battle’, ‘destroy’ and ‘attack the enemy’. 1) or the Romans, but more contemporary Western civilisation has long used and still frequently uses military analogies when we talk about disease. We may not glorify war to the same extent as the Greeks (Fig. This noble vision of war persisted until the great World War I poet Wilfred Owen wrote his bitter poem Dulce et decorum est, saying that if you had witnessed people being gassed, you would not tell your children the old lie Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. In one of his Odes, the Roman lyrical poet Horace urged Roman citizens to be warlike, writing Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (it is sweet and proper to die for one's country).
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