Off-topic, but in recent weeks I& #39;ve been reminded of a fascinating lecture I once attended by someone who was multilingual about the ways we talk about illness in different languages—English more than any other uses military/war language to describe cures/recovery. https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1246898019720728577">https://twitter.com/BreeNewso...
We battle cancer, we fight off a cold, our immune system are our bodies& #39; defenses, pathogens invade you, we are defeated by or victorious over disease, our cells attack pathogens and are destroyed, treatments are aggressive...
cures are a magic bullet, doctors give orders, epidemics are eradicated, treatments are weapons, literally the list seems to go on forever, it was a really "holy shit" moment for me when I realized I& #39;d just been using these terms my whole life without really thinking about it.
There& #39;s an argument to be made that all of this serves to dehumanize and atomize the patient, as well as buying into a kind of just-world theory that if you only have enough courage and will (or ammunition), you can overcome even fatal illnesses with impossible odds.