[T]here are no illnesses in nature, only relationships. There are, of course, naturally occurring events, including infectious viruses, malignant growths, ruptures of tissues, and unusual chromosome constellations, but these are not ipso facto illnesses. Without the social meaning that humans attach to them they do not constitute illness or disease: The fracture of a septuagenarian's femur has, within the world of nature, so more significance than the snapping of an autumn leaf from its twig; and the invasion of a human organism by cholera germs carries with it no more the stamp of "illness" than the souring of milk by other forms of bacteria. (Sedgwick, 1972, p. 211)
Peter Conrad, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness
medicine