Illness As Metaphor

In terms of medicine, etiology is the study of the causation of a disease or sickness. In this text it often serves that purpose; however, the term can also be used outside of medicine to explore the reasons for and causes of certain historical, mythological, or social developments.

A term that refers to the infliction or causation of punishment. Sontag often applies this word to social attitudes about cancer or tuberculosis diagnosis. It is a primary mode through which human history has understood the relation between the victim and the disease, which is to say that illness is often seen as a punishment for some sort of behavior.

This term, which generally refers to a sort of pensive sadness, is one that occurs frequently in Sontag’s book. The text frequently situates this word between illness (particularly tuberculosis) and the romanticization or aestheticization of the illness by writers or the public. One helpful way to think about melancholy as opposed to sadness is that the latter is more general and the former is defined in relation to causation or lack of known causation, making it particularly applicable to diseases with mysterious etiologies.

Generally understood, “body politic” is the collection of people under one governmental authority. The term often implies (metaphorically) the idea that a particular state, group, or culture functions as a body with different appendages all within the same central nervous system. The term is evocative for Sontag’s purposes because of the evocation of the individual body, the political sphere, and how those two relate to each other.