Resumen

MARTINEZ JIMENEZ, Miguel  y  SERRANO BOSQUET, Francisco Javier. Neurasthenia and Fibromyalgia: The Link between the Nervous System and Culture in Complex Clinical Entities. En-clav. pen [online]. 2017, vol.11, n.22, pp.51-74. ISSN 2594-1100.

The main goal of this paper consists on showing in what ways certain complex symptom clusters are able to acquire the status of disease, syndromes or clinical entities within a biomedical discourse which is part of an interrelation of different processes in which not only biological, but also historical, political and social factors get to be involved. In such cases, it is possible to identify a discursive mechanism that consists, on the one hand, on relying on assumptions and hypotheses that usually locate the origin of these clinical entities in the nervous system while sociocultural factors are included in the elucidations of their hypothetical causes on the other. As illustrative concrete cases, we have decided to analyze two cases of contested illness: neurasthenia and fibromyalgia, controversial diagnostic labels that have shared not only clinical similarities and coincidences but also contextual ones.

Palabras llave : neurasthenia; fibromyalgia; history of medicine; nervous system; culture.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )