Lovesickness and hepatitis C: what is a disease?

[...] even so, she argues, what counts as disease, and what forms diseases take, is influenced by social tastes and concerns that are different at different times; and this means that the history of disease is as much part of intellectual history as the history of medicine. The point can be made completely general by pointing out that the way we human beings divide up reality depends first on our being the kind of creature we are, in respect of our size (how different the world would seem if we were smaller than fleas or as big as mountains), our sensory and cognitive equipment, and our needs and interests.