ABSTRACT
From one point of view, the exemptions from normal duties and activities granted to a person who is ill constitute privileges. They free him in a certified way from some of the responsibilities that a well person is required to assume. However, to many patients on Ward F-Second, these exemptions of illness felt more like penalties than reprieves. It was difficult, then, for many patients on Ward F-Second to accept the state of incapacity and inactivity that illness and the sick role imposed on them. Of course, there were certain advantages to being exempted from the duties and problems of the “world outside,” an occasional patient sometimes half-jokingly admitted. Ward F-Second, of course, was just such a laboratory-sickroom: equipped with all of the latest apparatus and medicaments that were relevant to investigating and treating the particular cross-section of diseases with which its patients were afflicted.
