ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the work of some of the writers in western medical history who have presented themselves as experts in the perception and misperception of health. Here, there is no doubt and little possibility of disappointment: only a true perception that can be gained should you follow the expert’s advice. Sometimes, this advice feels altruistic and at other times exploitative of other people’s anxieties. Ultimately, however, it becomes clear that the basic shared humanity of both expert and non-expert reveals a shared human vulnerability, so that the expert can sometimes be just as susceptible to the kinds of intuitive, unreasonable perceptions of health he sees in the general population. This chapter touches on the work of Plato and Aristotle, Denis Diderot, Immanuel Kant, Galen, Prosper Alpinus, Jane Austen, Rudolf Virchow, Robert Dyer Lyons, Thomas Sydenham and Friedrich Nietzsche.
