Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease

Winner, 2009 Rachel Carson Prize, Society for the Social Studies of ScienceWinner, 2012 Edward Kremers Award, American Institute of the History of Pharmacy

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a new model of chronic disease—diagnosed on the basis of numerical deviations rather than symptoms and treated on a preventive basis before any overt signs of illness develop—that arose in concert with a set of safe, effective, and highly marketable prescription drugs. In...