Diskret medicin. Berättelser om astma i annonser och frågelistsvar 1950–1970.

This study highlights the medical object as an approach to study illness narratives. The medical objects is discussed as a way in broadening the study of medicine and includes other dimensions than those related to the pharmacological treatment. The aim of the article is to use narratives about asthma to analyse the culture around body, illness and health in the mid-1900s. The study focuses on the first airway-widening drugs for inhalation that came in the late 1950s. Material used in this article is advertisement for the drugs and contemporary narratives from people who suffered from asthma at this time or have experiences as a relative. In the advertisement for the drugs and inhalers there is astory about technological simplicity that points out that it ought not to be difficult to suffer from asthma. At a time when asthma prevented children and adults from having a normal life, this idealization could be seen as desirable. The pharmaceutical companies tried in this way to create cultural symbols about normal life and good health. Using the new inhalator was an opportunity to manage the asthma and manifest a body that could be seen as a normal one. Central to this rhetoric was the opportunity to be able to be discreet when using the inhalator. In this way the individual should manage their asthma and their treatment on their own, in private.