ABSTRACT
This chapter examines patients' perceived responses to biomedical treatment, Analysis of patients' perceptions of their recovery illuminates various dimensions of human existence that impact on recovery requisites, including patients' reactions to biomedicine as practiced in Mexico. Not uncommonly, recovery responses are reduced to one set of variables. For example, prescribed medications, patient compliance with treatment, or patient satisfaction have been associated with the doctor-patient relationship and, by implication, with influencing outcome. I propose that patients' perceptions of recovery from similarly diagnosed non-life-threatening subacute, sickness episodes can only be understood when three levels of analysis are considered in tandem: objective conditions of the person's life, the medical consultation concomitant with the prescribed treatment, and the subjective elements of a person's being, their life's lesions. This proposition is developed in this and the following chapter.
