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Accepted manuscript

Understanding Symptoms: diagnosis, cure, and bodily re-integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2025

Helene Scott-Fordsmand*
Affiliation:
Department of Science and Technology Studies, University College London Functional Disorders, Aarhus University Hospital Clare Hall, University of Cambridge
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Abstract

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What is lost, if we don’t have a diagnosis? This article examines the aims of clinical medicine, and the role of understanding in this. Starting from a case prompt with a patient suffering from persistent physical symptoms, I argue that understanding is at the clinical core, and that the target of such understanding is the patient body with symptoms. Synthesising accounts of medical understanding and phenomenology of illness, I suggest that the understanding sought in the clinic extends beyond mechanistic explanation to include a sense of bodily intelligibility, and that diagnoses are useful but not necessary tools to this end.

Information

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Philosophy of Science Association