TEXT: Anastasia Pivovarova WE LOVE YOURSELF AND ITS HEALTH, BECAUSE OUR BODY is the closest and most understandable that we have. But we love no less diseases. Try to complain that you have a toothache - you will hear in response several stories and recipes. But some diseases become more popular than others, sometimes it seems that everyone around suffers from one ailment - from the stars to the nearest neighbors. This is not like hypochondria, when a person is afraid and tests himself for everything, rather - for an epidemic, only here are many fashionable diseases do not spread with the speed of the flu. When and why do diseases become popular?.
A disease that can not be hidden It's not always possible to understand what really hurt people still some hundred years ago. They ached with stomach, seizures, died of blows and black blood, because the medicine was far from today's achievements. It was impossible to protect against diseases, even the notions of hygiene were very different from those to which we are accustomed. From many diseases there was no protection, and under such conditions the appearance of fashion can only be explained by a protective mechanism: in order not to be afraid of the disease, it was necessary to be proud of it. In the XVIII century in Europe began to develop medicine - as far as possible. It is at this time that it becomes fashionable to be sick, and literature and art only fuel interest in ailments: many wanted to be like heroines who faint from excess of feelings. Consumption has become fashionable. In many ways, because until the end of the next century people did not know how to treat tuberculosis, and they ached a lot. And also because earlier under the concept of "consumption" there were many diseases, not only the tuberculosis itself. It was believed that consumption comes to scientists, to those suffering from unhappy love and to mourners. Romantic tuberculosis can be and in the XX century, as it happened.
with the heroines of E. Remark, but after tuberculosis learned to heal and prevent, it became associated with a low standard of living, and the romance ended. Now tuberculosis is still one of the leading causes of death in the world, but nobody can call it fashionable and interesting any more. There is nothing mysterious in it, and the problem of tuberculosis resistance to antibiotics is of interest to scientists, not public opinion. It can be assumed,.
that fashionable are "diseases of abundance" - those that appear in wealthy people We can assume that fashionable are "diseases of abundance" - those that appear in wealthy people. If earlier the poor simply could not afford the disease (due to lack of medical care and banal hunger, people from the lower classes simply died from any more or less serious disease), the rich - could. The tendency to disease in general was a hallmark of a high society. Peasants and workers were supposed to be consistently healthy and strong, because their "simple" nature was allegedly not susceptible to breakdown, unlike the complex and finely tuned nature of aristocrats. "How could you think of suddenly appearing in society without being sick? Such strong health is decent only for the peasant generation. If you really do not feel any harassment, then hide, please, such a terrible crime against fashion and customs. Please, be ashamed of such a strong constitution and do not shield yourself from the number of gentle and ill people of great light ", - the satirical work of Nikolai Ivanovich Strakhov, published in 1791 and recently reprinted, just illustrates this. However, not all common diseases became fashionable. For example, only women hated hysteria - it was a mysterious disease with many symptoms, its cause was seen in the uterus, which voluntarily wandered or sent in pairs by the brain. Nothing attractive in hysteria, despite the prevalence, was not, on the contrary, it was considered a sign of weakness. But melancholy, in which you can see signs of depression or affective disorders, was much more popular. It is enough to recall the images of Byron or reread "Eugene Onegin" to understand: in the XIX century, to be fashionable, one had to declare himself a melancholy. A disease that used to be.
was not studied. There is the so-called third-year syndrome: students of medical schools at this time move from the basics to the study of diseases, biting dangerous symptoms and immediately find them in their. Approximately the same effect happens when a person feels unwell and opens a medical encyclopedia or drives the symptoms into the Google search box: there are many diseases that even a healthy person can easily find. There are enough nonspecific symptoms that manifest themselves in completely different diseases: weakness, dizziness, fever, drowsiness and so on.. Find yourself a couple of such signs - a simple task, especially if a couple of nights sleep badly or a week to forget to eat lunch. The same mechanism works when a disease becomes the subject of close attention of physicians and scientists: for example, they open a new method of treatment or allocate a separate diagnosis, create a program to support patients. In the information space there is information about the disease, its symptoms, risk factors, people find out about it and find out mass signs of the disease in themselves. This is helped by opinion leaders, the same stars who talk about their illnesses or support charity funds: against the background of universal interest, it is easier to collect donations. For example, several years ago there were very "popular" disorders of the autistic spectrum and the "mysterious" Asperger syndrome. After the release of the series about Sherlock massively appeared "sociopaths", and at the same time guides about how to communicate with them. According to the therapist Dmitry Isayev, there was a period when every second patient entering the reception room dramatically reported that he had depression, although there were no clinical manifestations of this disease in patients. Then the depression was romanticized on stage, in literature and cinema. Fashion for hard female standards of beauty quickly spawned anorexia and bulimia. Fashion for mysterious indigo children and the desire to rise at the expense of their own child opened an unprecedented interest in autism, the signs of which expanded beyond the boundaries of other known pediatric and psychiatric features. Dmitry Isaev notes that now at the peak of fashion anxiety disorders. The fear of real change in life gives rise to panic. It is masked by phobias about their own health or the health of their loved ones. According to the therapist, this is due to the way society is changing: our time becomes denser and more rapid. With increasing comfort, the conditions of survival paradoxically become much tougher. This inevitably affects the relationship between people, especially close relationships. And when it is necessary to change something in oneself, in the way of life, in relations with relatives, in order to catch up with the elusive time, fear comes. It is the fear of real changes in life that creates panic. She disguises herself with phobias about her own health or her health. After all, only the acute fear of death can block the anxiety of the need for real change, and now every second comes into the doctor's office with panic attacks. This does not mean that it is not necessary to talk about illnesses - quite the contrary. In this case, fashion, no matter how ridiculous it may be, only helps. If out of a hundred allegedly ill people at least one seriously thinks about his condition and goes to the doctor to stop the illness in time, it's great. Actually, for this, stories are needed. To some extent, this fashion helps the very sick to feel better, it removes the stigma "once sick, then bad". People who learn to try on the state of others, can better treat them. But fashion has another side to the disease. First, popularization is the depreciation of the patient's condition. "Ah, you think, I also had depression, I went to the movies and everything went away" - an example of just such a craze when the word "depression" was called any reduction in mood (and is still called). Secondly, the more fashionable the diagnosis becomes, the easier and more unambiguously it is perceived, and this already forms a misconception about any diagnosis: if in the film the hero gets cancer, then most likely in order to die and show tragedy. There are exceptions, in which the patient manages to overcome everything, but there are much fewer. Disease from which it is profitable to sell the medicine Dysbacteriosis, vegeto-vascular dystonia are diagnoses that can be put to anyone and anytime, too many nonspecific symptoms combine these states. But it is convenient to treat them with beautiful medicines. And it is profitable to sell, so we are constantly told in advertising how everyone started to suffer because of poor digestion or modern ecology, so you urgently need to get rid of toxins and withdraw toxins. This is not a fashion for disease in its pure form - rather the methods of treatment and prevention. Sometimes they directly oppose any diagnoses, for example "acidification of the body", sometimes a particular disease is not called, and the whole treatment process is called a beautiful word, for example, detox. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to take a critical look at obsessive popular advice.
Isaev notes that following fashion is always an imitation, an attempt to secure oneself through matching the strong and famous. And with fashion for disease the same, even though the diseases can pose a direct threat to life. Individuality is always a bit aloof from the accepted in society, from conformity to the majority, including from the mass fashion. Photos: Wikimedia Commons (1, 2), BBC Original article: Be unhealthy:.
Where does "fashion" come from?.
on sickness.