Health issues are, now more than ever, a significant discussion site occurring in a wide range of institutions. They transcend disciplinary boundaries and provide a rich locus for scholars to analyze the discourses that shape and determine them. This collection initiates inquiry into the role of rhetoric in various healthcare and medical discourses and examines what rhetoric - as a discipline in its right - can contribute to. This volume, the first in medical rhetoric as such, brings rhetorical inquiry to the fields of medicine, health, and disease, as well as the discursive and writing modes within and about them. The chapters illustrate the wide range of topics and analytic strategies rhetoricians bring to a complex social problem. They also offer valuable new insights into several medical disciplines and the languages essential to them.