Introduction

Abstract

From the perspectives of the academies associated with medicine and tourism, we will set out a position that is sceptical of the term ‘Medical Tourism’ yet at the same time embraces a structural bonding between two distinct and unrelated popular conceptions in the ordering of contemporary social life. Medicine and tourism have become clearly separated in contemporary popular consciousness. Medicine implies anything but a pleasurable experience, and tourism presumes a healthy disposition for participation. We argue that this popular conception of the separation of tourism and medicine ignores a historical continuity of lineage from the eighteenth-century pursuit of a ‘cure’ at resorts and spas to twentieth-century notions of holidays as worker welfare through global patient mobility in the quest for cutting-edge medical interventions in so-called untreatable conditions. Disciplinary divisions within the research 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. In this dynamic space and under the influence of transnational consumption, two very contrasting traditions of Western thought are now confronting each other.