A patient''s job is to tell the physician what hurts, and the physician''s job is to fix it. But how does the physician know what is wrong? What becomes of the patient''s story when the patient becomes a case? Addressing readers on both sides of the patient-physician encounter, Kathryn Hunter looks at medicine as an art that relies heavily on telling and interpreting a story--the patient''s story of illness and its symptoms.

A patient''s job is to tell the physician what hurts, and the physician''s job is to fix it. But how does the physician know what is wrong? What becomes of the patient''s story when the patient becomes a case? Addressing readers on both sides of the patient-physician encounter, Kathryn Hunter looks at medicine as an art that relies heavily on telling and interpreting a story--the patient''s story of illness and its symptoms.