Disease as a text

Insights from Starobinski’s work

Abstract

The paper examines the possibility and relevance of seeing the disease as a text, in the light of some of Starobinski’s insights on the nature and complexity of medicine. This perspective may help us in understanding many features of pathology and keeping them together, while it sheds light on the role of the clinicians’ approach to disease and the relationship between natural and historical dimensions in pathological phenomena. The aim is to lay the foundation for comprehensive medical semiotics, able to interpret and gather together the different kinds of signs associated with a pathology.