Occupation and Disease: How Social Factors Affect the Conception of Work-Related Disorders

How and why do physicians come to regard certain medical disorders as work-related? Is this process merely a matter of gathering and interpreting empirical evidence or is it a complex social phenomenon? In this fascinating book, Allard Dembe studies the histories of three ailments now commonly considered to be work-related—cumulative trauma disorders (especially carpal tunnel syndrome), occupational back pain, and noise-induced hearing loss—and demonstrates that numerous social factors affe...