The Medical Carnivalesque: Folklore among Physicians

The practice of medicine is immersed in issues of life, death, and suffering in relation to the mortal body. Because of this, the medical profession is a fertile arena for folklore that serves to address these topics among physicians.

In The Medical Carnivalesque, Lisa Gabbert argues that this extraordinarily difficult work context has led to the development of an occupational corpus of folklore, backstage talk, and humor that she calls the medical carnivalesque. Gabbert argues that sufferin...