book: Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness

book: Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness | Chris Feudtner

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	• Bittersweet: Diabetes, Insulin, and the Transformation of Illness Chris Feudtner The University of North Carolina Press, 2003 - 312 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
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A great book for medical and non-medical readers

This book describes the transformation of diabetes from a rapidly-fatal illness to a chronic one with a host of new associated problems. Though written by a physician, the book focuses on this transformation from patients' perspectives. In addition, it emphasizes the impact of diabetes on not just the health of individuals but also on their day-to-day lives.

The highlight of this book is the collection of stories of individual patients and families. Drawing from letters and other patient records at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston, Feudtner vividly details the lives of diabetic patients in the 20th century. Of particular interest is a patient who corresponds with his physicians using self-drawn cartoons, a number of which are included in the book.

While this book will be of special interest to diabetic patients and physicians, I recommend it to any reader intersted in the interplay between modern medicine and the people it aims to serve.

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In this first book-length study of the history of diabetes in the 20th-century U.S., Feudtner draws on the medical archives and letters exchanged between patients or their family members and the staff of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston to explore how medical intervention and cultural change have affected diabetics' lives. Transmuted by medical intervention from its natural course to one that is uncharted, diabetes, according to Feudtner, demonstrates the complex ironies of medical progress.

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