Illness has changed in the postmodern era, claims the author of this book. We become ill in ways our parents and grandparents did not, with diseases unheard of and treatments undreamed of by them. Exploring these changes, the author tells the story of what goes into making the postmodern experience of illness different. He decries the overuse and misuse of the term "postmodern", and shows how ideas of illness, health and postmodernism illuminate one another in late 20th-century culture. Modern medicine traditionally separates disease - an objectively varified disorder - from illness - a patient's subjective experience. Postmodern medicine, the author says, can make no such distinction, instead it demands a biocultural model, situating illness at the crossroads of biology and culture. Maladies such as chronic fatigue syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder signal our awareness that there are biocultural ways of being sick.