"Healthy People Are People Who Just Not Realise How Sick They Are"

Centenary of "Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine" by Jules Romains

Abstract

Health anxieties play a major role in the hierarchy of today’s anxieties. Medical treatment and advice frequently fuel them more than alleviate them. Jules Romains' theatre play Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine (1923) has lost none of its topicality 100 years on and sheds light on the position of medicine in society between care and help, awareness and health education, and the business, not least with anxieties. Dealing with Knock today helps to expose the intentions of the health industry and to put into perspective the significance of this type of health concept, because health is not an end in itself to which the entire development of society and personality must be subordinated.