Nature Of Suffering And The Goal Of Medicine Essay

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Illness can affect more than just the physical body – it can also reshape an individual’s mentality and identity. Many physicians treat the mind and the body as one when healing a patient. They fail to understand the complexity and differences between the pain and suffering that each patient experiences. In “The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine”, Eric Cassell argues that physicians need to realize that there is a difference not only between how to treat the mind and the body, but also in the meanings behind pain and suffering. While pain is more of a physical attribute, suffering deals with the mental aspect of illness. When a patient complains about the intensity of pain, they are complaining about discomfort coming from a specific part of their body. When they complain about suffering, they are complaining about the emotional distress that they are …show more content…
While his physical pain comes from his nightmares and screaming, his mental suffer results from the idea that the “intactness of [his] future” is compromised (Cassell 9). Suffering has caused him to slowly realize the lack of control he has over his condition and situation. His profession, which seems to shape the bulk of his identity, is put at stake when Anderson realizes that is afraid of going back into medicine due to his shell shock and its trigger effects. INSERT QUOTE. Doubts fill Anderson’s mind about whether he can continue his social role as a man who needs to earn money in order to provide for his family so that they can live a normal life. Cassell points out that sometimes roles in society as so fixated that diseases which impair one’s normal function practically destroys the person due to their lack of ability to perform their role (15). Anderson is towards the middle stages of his life, and does not feel that he is any shape to enter another field or profession – medicine is the only thing he
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