It makes me think about the changing disease patterns and how chronic disease is now more common than infectious (although, to me, slowly wasting away from TB in the nineteenth century is chronic, but that's another story). Combined with the fact that you usually can't *see* a chronic disease and that many Americans believe we have eradicated the most important diseases, I can see how it lends it's self to invalidating the respect once accorded "invalids."
no subject
Date: 2009-10-19 06:55 pm (UTC)