CT Suite

Saunders Barry F. Saunders

Description

In CT Suite the doctor and anthropologist Barry F. Saunders provides an ethnographic account of how a particular diagnostic technology, the computed tomographic (CT) scanner, shapes social relations and intellectual activities in and beyond the CT suite, the unit within the diagnostic radiology department of a large teaching hospital where CT images are made and interpreted. Focusing on how expertise is performed and how CT images are made into diagnostic evidence, he concentrates not on the function of CT images for patients but on the function of the images for medical professionals going about their routines. Yet Saunders offers more than insider ethnography. He links diagnostic work to practices and conventions from outside medicine and from earlier historical moments. In dialogue with science and technology studies, he makes a significant contribution to scholarship on the visual cultures of medicine.Saunders's analyses are informed by strands of cultural history and theory including art historical critiques of realist representation, Walter Benjamin's concerns about violence in "mechanical reproduction," and tropes of detective fiction such as intrigue, the case, and the culprit. Saunders analyzes the diagnostic "gaze" of medical personnel reading images at the viewbox, the two-dimensional images or slices of the human body rendered by the scanner, methods of archiving images, and the use of scans as pedagogical tools in clinical conferences. Bringing cloistered diagnostic practices into public view, he reveals the customs and the social and professional hierarchies that are formulated and negotiated around the weighty presence of the CT scanner. At the same time, by returning throughout to the nineteenth-century ideas of detection and scientific authority that inform contemporary medical diagnosis, Saunders highlights the specters of the past in what appears to be a preeminently modern machine.

Sujets

• Médecine
• Medical imaging

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822392002
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

C T S U I T E

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Studies of Objectifying Practice

A series edited by

Arjun Appadurai,

Jean Comaroff, and

Judith Farquhar

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1B AcWbS

The Work of Diagnosis in the Age

of Noninvasive Cutting

2C93 C<7D3@A7BG >@3AA Durham and London 

©2008Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acidfree paper¥ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Minion and Gotham by Achorn International Library of Congress Cataloging inPublication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the University Research Council at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, which provided funds toward the production of this book.

C O N T E N T S

1 2 3 4 5 6

Acknowledgmentsvii

Introduction1

Reading and Writing13 Cutting93 Diagnosing130 Curating159 Testifying and Teaching199 Exposition275

Impression300

Notes307 Clinical Terms and Jargon345 Bibliography349 Illustrations375 Index379

AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S

This book would not exist without the generous attentions and critical tractions of professors, colleagues, students, and friends over fifteen years or so. Special thanks are due Judith Farquhar—for her marvelous examples of discernment and clarity of explanation, and much more, over many years— and for her initial welcome of this book as part of the Duke University Press seriesBody, Commodity, Text.I also thank Ruel Tyson for contributions to my scholarly vocation and formation at so many crucial junctures, including many parts of this book. And I thank Larry Churchill for welcoming me to the in terdisciplinary conversations atncuSocial Medicine, which has become such a fine intellectual home. Among colleagues at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who shaped the book most directly—by commenting over the years on writing, of fering bibliographic recommendations, thinking with me about biomedicine asculture,and more—are KeithWailoo,Tomoko Masuzawa,Carol Mavor (all of whom critiqued the dissertation that preceded the book), Kevin Parker, Richard Clark, Victor Braitberg, Fletcher Linder, Della Pollock, Mark Olson, Keith Cochran, Stephen Pemberton, Joel Elliott, Roper Marks, and Larry Russell. I am indebted to my hosts at the University Hospital Department of Radiol ogy where I conducted my fieldwork in the late1990s. The chair and vicechairs and the directors ofctservices were welcoming and cooperative. Members of resident and attending staff, many technologists, several nurses and adminis

trators, and various clerks, schedulers, and couriers were helpful in answering questions, allowing themselves to be recorded and photographed, and gener ally tolerating my intrusions into busy routines. This book is thin tribute to many performances of skill and care that I witnessed. Any misrepresentations of radiological views and activities in this book are my own. I am also grateful to Dr. Melissa Rosado de Christenson and colleagues for my welcome in a fall 2000visit to theafipDepartment of Radiologic Pathology. The book has benefited from feedback on various presentations in schol arly colloquia and meetings: Duke Sawyer Seminar on Cultures and Medicine; University of Chicago Department of Anthropology; European Association for Social Anthropologists (Vienna); Association for Social Anthropology (Man chester); Society for the Social History of Medicine (Manchester); Society for Literature and Science (Los Angeles); Tanner Humanities Institute (Salt Lake City). I am particularly grateful for the perspicuity and help of several host col leagues in these settings: Priscilla Wald, Cristina Grasseni, Simon Cohn, Jim Bono. Helpful commentaries included those of Joe Dumit, Jean Comaroff, Barbara Stafford, Brian Rotman, Timothy Lenoir, and Andreas Roepstorff— among many others. Two anonymous readers of the book manuscript at Duke University Press were meticulous and generous in their interventions. Ken Wissoker and Court ney Berger deserve thanks for securing their help—and also for their own pa tience and prudence throughout manuscript revisions. Over a longer durée, Kathryn Montgomery’s insights into literary meth ods in medicine—and friendship—have been very important. Another friend, Liza Wieland, lent her poet’s ear to this project when my own editorial judg ment was at low ebb. At the University of North Carolina, I am fortunate to have recurring teach ing roles, and fine colleagues, in both Anthropology and Religious Studies. Stu dents in several graduate seminars have offered helpful critical commentaries on chapter drafts. In Social Medicine, I remain deeply grateful for my teaching appointment (and for one leave!) while this book project was in the works, and I am particularly appreciative of warm collegial support I enjoyed from Sue Estroff, Nancy King, Gail Henderson, Bill Lachicotte, Jon Oberlander, Don Madison, Kendrick Prewitt, Bill Kerwin, W. D. White, Terry Holt, Des Runyan, Alan Cross, Rebecca Walker, Judy Benoit, Lisa Perry, and others. In Medicine and Family Medicine, I thank Fred Sparling, Tim Carey, Byron Hoffman, Todd Granger, Mark Gwynne, and Warren Newton for recognition of my scholarly work. At Chatham Hospital, erstwhile home away from home, I thank Jim

vî î î • Acknowledgments

Adams, Annette Willett, Cam Austin, Bea Morehead, deb Garner, and John Dykers for the same, and for their friendship. Two able assistants supported specific phases of this project: Rachel Winters helped with bibliographic work; and Lisa Smith transcribed tapes of radiologi cal shoptalk. Several archivists provided special help beyond reproduction of images: Michael Rhode (National Museum of Health and Medicine,ipfa) and Eileen Mathias (Academy of Natural Sciences). A grant from the Univer sity of North Carolina’s University Research Council helped defray publication costs. Finally: I express my heartfelt thanks to my family and friends—especially my wife, Susan—who gave me the support and freedom to think and write and kept their impatience for the book’s finish mostly under wraps.

Acknowledgments • î X