Medical Semiotics

Abstract

Medical semiotics, as a branch of general semiotics, has never really gained a firm foothold in either semiotics itself or medical science. Despite the fact that the discipline of semiotics traces its roots to the medical domain in the ancient world, it has been largely relegated to the margins, with several key exceptions starting with Jakob von Uexküll and more recently Thomas A. Sebeok and the biosemiotic movement. However, there is no evidence that it is a significant and growing autonomous area of research either within biosemiotics or medical practice. The purpose of this paper is to revive interest in medical semiotics examining at the historical principles that would make it highly relevant today in the global village where conceptions of disease and health are in constant flux.