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Previous Volume 352:756 February 24, 2005 Number 8 Next

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It is the rare book in social medicine that does not cite Susan Sontag's opening sentence in Illness as Metaphor: "Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship."¹ The recent death of this literary scholar, novelist, and cultural critic from myelodysplastic syndrome is a profound loss for the intellectual and clinical study of medicine. Sontag's enduring interest in the capacity of language to shape experience led her, in such works as Illness as Metaphor (1978) and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), to recognize that illness and the representation of it are always colored by culture or tainted . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Dr. Charon is a professor of clinical medicine and the director of the Program in Narrative Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York.

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