Social Determinants In Cutting For The Stone

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In "Cutting For the Stone" there are many social determinants in the novel. A social determinant are conditions in which people live, work, grow, and age.(source). Sister Mary Joesph Praise faced many social determinants as well as other characters. On the ninth night on the Calangute one crew member, four of the passengers, and sister Anjali came down with a severe illness.(pg.17) The ship that the sisters and all the passengers were on was not meant to carry passengers in the first place.(pg.15) A few social determinants are close quarters, unfit housing, very little knowledge, a lack of cleanliness, illness, and the only doctor aboard had been stricken with the illness. Aboard the ships was the Typhus disease and another strange fever. Typhus is an infectious disease caused by rickettsiae. It is transmitted by vectors such as lice, mice, rat fleas, and ticks.(source) …show more content…
Stone referred to the state that sister Anjali was in as coma vigil and subsultus tendinum(typhoid state) but states also that he does not know much of "medical matters" he is a surgeon. Coma vigil means that the victim has a lesion that disconnects the cerebral hemispheres from all areas lower than the oculomotor nucleus in the brain stem(sourve). Subsultus tendinum (muscle twitches) are a twitching of tendons also common in fever. This is a social determinant for him because with more knowledge he may have been better able to diagnose and treat sister Anjali. Another social determinant is that many of the passengers on board were not used to life on a ship. Their bodies and immunes systems not equipped to withstand diseases and viruses in which they face. If only they were equipped back then with simply just that of knowledge of the diseases could have maybe helped prevent such outbreak. I think the biggest social determinants were knowledge and lack of equipment in this particular place in the novel. Medicine now also has so much advance that could have saved lives in this