Emergence of rheumatic fever in the nineteenth century.
How do we make sense of the process of disease definition when the tools for "framing" a pathophysiologic reality and the reality to be framed may have both been changing? The sudden emergence of rheumatic fever at the end of the eighteenth century was the result of distinct biological changes that led to cardiac damage. But the identification of the disease also depended on the ability of clinicians to diagnose it in the absence of easily observable cardiac symptoms. Clinicians were able to appreciate the alteration of rheumatism into rheumatic fever through assimilation of technological changes (the stethoscope and autopsy), refinements in clinical thinking (the "typical case"), and the concentration of patients in hospitals where they were treated by physicians who were medical leaders and educators.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- United States
- Rheumatic Heart Disease
- Rheumatic Fever
- Humans
- History, 20th Century
- History, 19th Century
- History, 18th Century
- Health Policy & Services
- 4206 Public health
- 4203 Health services and systems
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- United States
- Rheumatic Heart Disease
- Rheumatic Fever
- Humans
- History, 20th Century
- History, 19th Century
- History, 18th Century
- Health Policy & Services
- 4206 Public health
- 4203 Health services and systems