Medicine as a cultural phenomenon

The phenomenon of medicine is predominantly understood in the logic of natural science discourse, in the perspective of disciplinary scientific history or in the abstract-logical paradigm. The research project undertaken in this monograph provides a different perspective: the medical experience is considered in the key of humanitarian discourse, in the horizon of cultural meanings. The book explores the possibility and reveals the principles and ways of viewing medicine as a cultural phenomenon, based on the analysis of the approaches, contained in the non-classical branches of the modern Western philosophy. The revealed methodological toolkit is turned to consideration of medical tradition in Russian culture. Based on the material of myth and language the work presents a systematic analysis of the medical aspects of the lifeworld of man in the Russian-Slavic culture; the specific features of the physician and the patient, the specificity of bodily experience, the notion of health and disease, the attitude towards drugs are highlighted. The book can be useful for those interested in humanitarian approaches to the study of medicine, as well as medical aspects of Russian culture.