History
by
The idea of “history” conveys many meanings. It can be chronology, the “aggregate of past events; the course of human affairs.” It can be scholarship, the “branch of knowledge that deals with past events.” And it can be craft, a “narration” or “representation” (OED Online 2020, “history”). In the context of health, history can also claim an intimate relationship with healing. Clinicians in many healing traditions diagnose patients through histories, often with formal methods. When a patient presents with a chief complaint, the physician conducts a diagnostic interview that traces the patient’s history of present illness, the past medical history, the family history, and the social history. The goal is to construct a narrative of the patient’s experience, identify what has changed over time, consider possible causes (i.e., the differential diagnosis), and make an argument about the best explanation. What historians do for societies, doctors do for individuals. Historians long ago realized that the act of history is not a simple task of assembling chronological narratives and deciphering their unambiguous meanings. Historians understand that different histories can be written of any specific event. This subjectivity is both a problem and an opportunity. William Cronon captured these postmodern anxieties in his...
This essay may be found on page 103 of the printed volume.