'History of Clinical Iatrogenesis: Before and After Ivan Illich' workshop to be held at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Manchester on 19th May 2006. (360G-Wellcome-079987_Z_06_Z)

History of Clinical Iatrogenesis: Before and After Ivan Illich Precisely 30 years ago, the social critic Ivan Illich published his book Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, in which he presented several cases of iatrogenic diseases as a way to illuminate the intrinsic flaws of highly institutionalised, professionalised, technological modern medicine. He problematised modern medicine because, in his view, it deprived people of illness experiences and simultaneously inhibited autonomous efforts to maintain health. Since the publication of Medical Nemesis, critics from medical sociology, policy and even inside medicine engaged with Illich's ideas of 'iatrogenesis'. In contrast, there has hardly been any debate in the history of medicine. Although adverse effects of medicine had long been noted and commented on inside and outside medicine with words such as 'poisoning' and 'toxicity', the conditions that Ilich referred to as 'iatrogenic' diseases emerged in the post-war period, and they were correlated with the rise of new medical therapies, new technologies, the use of new drugs such as penicillin and cortisone, and surgical techniques such as organ transplantation. The term has resurfaced in the public domain more recently, in the context of morally- and politically-charged discussions over the (re-)emergence of infectious diseases such as MRSA and AIDS. This meeting has emerged from work on the Trust-funded grant on Fungal Diseases and Modern Medicine: Mycology, Aspergillosis and Iatrogenic Diseases.