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Previous Volume 347:1629-1630 November 14, 2002 Number 20 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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Edited by Rita Charon and Martha Montello. 242 pp. New York, Routledge, 2002. $85 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-415-92837-0 (cloth); 0-415-92838-9 (paper).

You will search medical textbooks in vain for the differential diagnosis distinguishing modern illness from postmodern illness. But if this dichotomy and the evolution of the former condition into the latter were established, the project of narrative ethics would follow logically. According to David Morris, a contributor to Stories Matter, the modern perspective is "biomedical": we are our genes, our organs, our laboratory measurements. The postmodern perspective is "biocultural": we are made of stories — cultural, familial, interpersonal, psychological, emotional, and biologic narratives. "Reading" these stories from the perspective of the main characters is the job of physicians and medical . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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