This book assesses rhetorical principles of contemporary health issues.""Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine"" explores problems in health and health care that resist conventional medical solutions. Judy Z. Segal analyzes, for example, the reciprocal persuasions in the physician/patient relationship. Patients persuade physicians that they are ill and in need of care; physicians, for their part, seek to persuade patients to adhere to treatments. The intractable problem of a patient's rejection of a doctor's advice, says Segal, can be considered, in part, a rhetorical failure: a failure of persuasion.The first comprehensive study of contemporary health issues grounded in rhetorical principles, ""Health and the Rhetoric of Medicine"" offers critical analysis for scholarly, professional, and lay audiences. A useful resource for critical common sense in everyday life, the text provides an effective examination of a society increasingly influenced by the rhetoric of health and medicine.