ABSTRACT
In contemporary industrial societies, the institution of medicine has assumed or been given the task of maintaining this aspect of our reality, just as many other phenomena have become ‘medicalised’ (Conrad and Schneider, 1980). The innocence with which the men discussed by Peter Farrer in Chapter 1 pursued their activities is now no longer possible. Medicine has provided us with a language through which the activities of such men are apprehended as pathologies which can be diagnosed, treated and, perhaps ultimately prevented.
