Diskret medicin. Berättelser om astma i annonser och frågelistsvar 1950–1970

Abstract

Discreet Medicin. Asthma Narratives in Advertisements and Questionnaires 1950–1970

This study highlights the medical object as an approach to study illness narratives. The medical object is discussed as a mean to broaden the study of medicine and include other dimensions than those related to the pharmacological treatment. The aim of the article is to use narratives about asthma to analyse the culture perspectives on body, illness and health in the mid- 1900s. The study focuses on the first airway-widening drugs for inhalation introduced in the late 1950s. The sources in this article are advertisements for the drugs and contemporary narratives from people who suffered from asthma at this time or have had experiences as a relative. In the advertisements for the drugs and inhalers we find stories about technological simplifications that points out that it ought not to be trying to suffer from asthma. At a time when asthma prevented children and adults from having a normal life, this idealization could be seen as desirable. The pharmaceutical enterprises tried in this way to create cultural symbols of normal life and good health. Using the new inhalators was an opportunity to manage the asthma and manifest a body that could be seen as a normal one. Central to this rhetoric was the opportunity to discretion when using the inhalator. In this way the individual should manage their asthma and their treatment privately.