Blog #3

Dhruv Khullar article “The Troubles With Medicine’s Metaphors” discourages the use of “using military terms like ‘battle’” to help a patient understand their disease. Khullar has found it has been increasingly detrimental to the patients health. Phrasing the disease as a fight leaves the patient with feeling as if they have won or lost the fight against the disease. Khullar hopes to promote to others that this use of metaphor should be taken lightly, as it may harm the patient more than do good.

 

After reading Khullar’s article about metaphors involved in the medical field, I found that I agree with his point, as I do not feel it benefits the patient if he or she sees the illness as a fight. When it is declared a patient has a disease, the emotions that are brought forth are negative. In addition to negative thoughts, if a patient is convinced they have no hope in getting cured, they will fall into a depressive state. As Khullar writes, there are only two outcomes in a war, winning and losing. I think that unless it is positive that the disease can be cured, it would be in the best interest of the patient to resist using metaphors in the medical field. On the contrary, I think metaphors are important in the sense that they help patients understand the disease. I think metaphors allow easy communication between a doctor and a patient.

 

“Metaphorically Speaking” by James Geary:

“Metaphor matters because it opens the door to discovery. Whenever we solve a problem, or make a discovery, we compare what we know with what we don’t know.”

• I chose this quote because it shows metaphors are the key to understanding concepts and we are able to understand things through metaphor by using what we already know.

 

“See Through Words” by Michael Erard:

“My metaphors close the gap in people’s ability to grasp something, or speed up what they’re already on track to see”

• I chose this quote because I believe metaphors do help make the connection between two ideas and they can help someone understand something that might not have been clear before the metaphor.

 

“The Trouble with Medicine’s Metaphors” by Dhruv Khullar:

“… found that patients who view their disease as an ‘enemy’ tend to have higher levels of depression and anxiety, and poorer quality of life than those who ascribe a more positive meaning”

• I chose this quote because I think it shows how metaphors in medicine can negatively affect the psychological thoughts of a patient and it leads to the decline in the patient’s health instead of it getting better.