The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture by James T. PattersonReview by: Robert W. HetheringtonThe Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer,1991), pp. 340-341Published by: Canadian Journal of SociologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3340695 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 04:28

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Canadian Journal of Sociology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheCanadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.69 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:28:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

"ethnicity paradox" to identify Park's discovery that increased participation in immigrant (i.e., inherently separatist) institutions enhances fuller assimilation into dominant institutions. The author also acknowledges Park's contributions to ethnographic research methods through the use of documents (primarily the media) to inform the analysis of subcultural institutions.

The book's strength is that it provides a detailed summary of one of Park's central research themes and the ways in which that theme has been interpreted by his students and professional colleagues. Two of the book's weaknesses are that it verges on an apologia for Park and that there is little critical analysis of the ways in which Park's work could inform contemporary theory. The Romance of Culture would be a good assignment for an undergraduate seminar in sociologi- cal theory as a supplement to one or two of Park's original essays.

University of Virginia Daphne Spain

James T. Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1987, 380 pp.

This book is written by a professor of history at Brown University. His explicit aim is to "explore cancer in the context of American culture from the 1880s to the present." The data used for this task are drawn from a very extensive array of primary and secondary sources, ranging from books dealing with the general issue of health and society through newspapers to primary sources such as publications of cancer societies. The thesis of the book is that the study of the history of disease "can reveal much about patterns of thought and behavior in society." The intended audience includes historians, political scientists, sociolo- gists, and other readers interested in the "cultural dimensions of science and medicine."

The argument of the book is developed through a prologue and eleven chapters, with each chapter taking up about thirty pages. The prologue introduces the reader to the experience of cancer through re-living personal, medical, and popular reactions to the illness and death of General Ulysses S. Grant in 1884- 85. The story reveals the "dread and revulsion common to popular attitudes concerning the disease" through in-depth and sensationalist media coverage of his condition and suffering. The tale also reveals the inability of the medical profession to deal with this and many other illnesses, despite the beginnings of exciting new discoveries in science which would eventually inform medical practice. The fate of Grant is sealed; the profession can only sit by and administer cocaine to ease the pain.

Subsequent chapters of the book attempt to provide documentation for broad trends in society which are reflected in actions and attitudes related to cancer.

"ethnicity paradox" to identify Park's discovery that increased participation in immigrant (i.e., inherently separatist) institutions enhances fuller assimilation into dominant institutions. The author also acknowledges Park's contributions to ethnographic research methods through the use of documents (primarily the media) to inform the analysis of subcultural institutions.

The book's strength is that it provides a detailed summary of one of Park's central research themes and the ways in which that theme has been interpreted by his students and professional colleagues. Two of the book's weaknesses are that it verges on an apologia for Park and that there is little critical analysis of the ways in which Park's work could inform contemporary theory. The Romance of Culture would be a good assignment for an undergraduate seminar in sociologi- cal theory as a supplement to one or two of Park's original essays.

University of Virginia Daphne Spain

James T. Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1987, 380 pp.

This book is written by a professor of history at Brown University. His explicit aim is to "explore cancer in the context of American culture from the 1880s to the present." The data used for this task are drawn from a very extensive array of primary and secondary sources, ranging from books dealing with the general issue of health and society through newspapers to primary sources such as publications of cancer societies. The thesis of the book is that the study of the history of disease "can reveal much about patterns of thought and behavior in society." The intended audience includes historians, political scientists, sociolo- gists, and other readers interested in the "cultural dimensions of science and medicine."

The argument of the book is developed through a prologue and eleven chapters, with each chapter taking up about thirty pages. The prologue introduces the reader to the experience of cancer through re-living personal, medical, and popular reactions to the illness and death of General Ulysses S. Grant in 1884- 85. The story reveals the "dread and revulsion common to popular attitudes concerning the disease" through in-depth and sensationalist media coverage of his condition and suffering. The tale also reveals the inability of the medical profession to deal with this and many other illnesses, despite the beginnings of exciting new discoveries in science which would eventually inform medical practice. The fate of Grant is sealed; the profession can only sit by and administer cocaine to ease the pain.

Subsequent chapters of the book attempt to provide documentation for broad trends in society which are reflected in actions and attitudes related to cancer.

340 340

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.69 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:28:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Among the trends identified are the following: (1) the rise in prestige of the medical profession, primarily based on reverence for science; (2) increasingly aggressive "can-do" attitude towards illness, and its companion attitude of "death against death" as Illich phrased it; (3) the channelling of greater and greater amounts of money into the technological fix, accompanied by the creation of large bureaucracies to manage the fix and involvement of government to legitimize it; (4) constant, unfulfilled promises of payoffs for investment, buttressed by the peculiarly American "power of positive thinking"; (5) the always second-rate support for alternatives to technology, particularly where they involve significant social change, and the rise of middle-class/business/ professional alliances to ensure the continued dominance of the technological view; (6) the underlying reality, reflected in much of social action, of the fundamental anxiety of death; (7) development and persistence of a "counterculture," primarily based in the lower classes, involving scepticism, doubt, and mistrust of "experts" and government.

Sociologists will find the book mildly interesting, but lacking in analytic or theoretic insight, rather like a journalistic account. I suppose it is not the historian's goal to interpret history in term of theories, or to try to analyze the events of history in terms of evidence for or against certain positions. However, in failing to do this, the historian is subject to interpreting events in terms of the selective nature of evidence that she/he employs in his/her descriptions. Many of the materials from which evidence is drawn in this account are from establishment publications, or from "analysis" conducted by mouthpieces such as Time magazine and the New York Times. Beyond the lack of incisive analysis (or perhaps because of it), I found the book to be exceedingly long, tedious, repetitious, and poorly organized: an adequate demonstration of the few major points that are made could have been accomplished in a short journal article. As for its utility in courses of medical sociology, this book will undoubtedly take its place among the thousands of descriptions available on the topic of "health and society" which inform but do not explain.

University of Alberta Robert W. Hetherington

341

This content downloaded from 62.122.79.69 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 04:28:17 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions