ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the ways in which people in the past have misperceived health and, crucially, have come to realise this misperception. It is possible to become sick without at first realising this, and it is possible to believe that you have recovered when you have not. These possibilities have been recognised at points across hundreds of years of history. There have been times when the trustworthiness of doctors has been called into question, and when the capacity of sick people to deceive their relatives and friends has been commonly understood. In the twenty-first century, the warped health idealisations of slavery, sexism and fascism are not unknown to many people. At times, health appears strange, complicated, worthless or dangerous. Yet it never ceases entirely to exist, and it is never generally abandoned as a useless and unattractive concept. This chapter draws from a broad range of sources from different places and time periods, including the writings of Francis Bacon, Augustine of Hippo, John Evelyn, Kafka, Anne Frank, Queen Victoria, Simone de Beauvoir and Robert Falcon Scott.
