Medical causes of death in preindustrial Europe: some historiographical considerations.

ODERN science and medicine are human constructs. Thus, they constitute a system of thought and representation of reality, not reality itself. Emerging in Europe during the nineteenth century, they promoted a profound transformation in the dominant ways of representating external reality that was exported around the world. The Western framework for understanding scientific and medical reality occupies a central, pivotal position in the modern world and has given enormous influence to those who hold its principles. Although the perception of the achievements of the last ioo years has led many Westerners to assume that their representations of death and its causes are the most authentic, the "truest," death has always required explanation. Its omnipresent and unavoidable reality is simply too important to humans not to have a system of representing and explaining it. Thus, the philosophical and religious framework of