ABSTRACT
Today, fewer and fewer people in the Western world feel “healthy and bodily well despite undeniable progress in their objective state of health” (Barsky 1988: 414; Naraindas 2011; also Nichter, this volume). Barsky tries to account for a widening gap between what he calls objective health status and subjective health experience-a phenomenon he dubs “the failure of success.” The success lies in advances in medical technology, which make it increasingly possible for people in general as well as for medical professionals to interpret somatic or psychological disturbances in terms of medical diagnosis. The “failure” lies in the tendency for people in general to use medical diagnosis for life experience and thereby translate social signs into bodily dysfunctions. In a discussion on “medical tourism” (ibid.), the authors take up those constraints and shortages that may be directly responsible for unresolved health issues. They are also due to a therapeutic impasse resulting from orthodox medicine’s inability to provide a solution for many patients’ problems. The patients described in this chapter have been called “the tired nomads” (Evengård and Sachs 1994) due to the complex situation they find themselves in as a result of the failure of success.
