Medical Tourism and Transnational Health Care

Medicine and tourism have become separated in contemporary popular consciousness. The former implies anything but a pleasurable experience and the latter presumes a healthy disposition for participation. We argue that this popular conception of the separation of tourism and medicine ignores an historical continuity of lineage from the 18th century pursuit of a 'cure' at resorts and spas, to 20th century notions of holidays as worker welfare through to global patient mobility in the quest for cutting-edge medical interventions in so-called 'untreatable' conditions. Disciplinary divisions within the academy have reinforced the separation between medicine and tourism in popular culture, but there is now an emergent challenge to re-think the medicine/tourism nexus. Under the influence of transnational health care consumption, two very contrasting traditions of Western thought are now confronting one another. This book provides a comprehensive landscape of diverse research communities' attempts to capture its implications for existing bodies of knowledge in selected aspects of medicine, medical ethics, health policy and management, and tourism studies.