Metaphorically transmitted diseases. How do patients embody medical explanations?

Background: The examination was guided by recent theories on metaphors, holding that our conception of the physical world in many ways derives from personal bodily experiences. Such experiences are fundamental to the elaboration of abstract structures of meaning, which, through metaphorical projections, provide a constitutive role in our overall comprehension of the world. It is thus to be assumed that patients will bring their own cluster of metaphors into the consultation room to structure the doctor's explanations.

[Methaphors and understanding of diseases].

In the recent two decades it has been argued that our language and sense of reality is radically structured by metaphors. Metaphors are not just figurative expressions of existing similarities, but can create such similarities. Certain metaphors (root metaphors) may convey new world views and thus underpin new theoretical formations.