ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on pain and rehabilitation in disease. Rehabilitation was first used in a medical context in 1888, relating to children who had suffered from conditions due to parental neglect. Rehabilitation methods were adopted by a number of branches of medical practice, treating those with a range of diseases, from cancer to tuberculosis. Rehabilitative spaces were associated with pain, struggle and failure, as well as success and recovery. The pain associated with rehabilitation regimes was controlled, medicalised and overseen by a practitioner, or by patients themselves. Rehabilitation was associated with a wide range of therapeutic tools. Patient narratives of treatment regimes, pain and rehabilitation also informed other potential patients. Cancer narratives remained popular, and well-known writers and journalists wrote about the treatment regimes and their reflections on the impact of the disease. Different conceptions of the success of rehabilitation therapies for children affected by polio abounded. Narratives of addiction were often situated outside of institutional settings.
