medicinal geography
The application of geographical methods to medical problems, such as disease, morbidity, and mortality; for example, the relationship of the distribution of disease due to geographical variables such as the incidence of bilharzia and the spread of irrigation schemes, or a statistical analysis to discover whether spatial patterns of disease are due to chance or causal factors. Medicinal geography is also concerned with the spatial organization of health care, accessibility to health care, and the development of spatially targeted health care initiatives. Poststructuralism argues that medicine is a form of knowledge informed by cultural ideologies; as such, it must vary spatially. So do the ‘labels’ given to diseases; AIDS has been labelled, among others, as an infection of the gay, or the single, or the immoral. (
