In Illness as Metaphors, Susan Sontag traced the influence of metaphors associated with diseases —tuberculosis and cancer, in particular — and how they were applied to sick people so relentlessly that they sometimes obscured the nature of the illnesses. It was said, at the turn of the last century, that people contracted TB due to “too much passion,” whereas, half a century later, people were said to get cancer due to psychological repression or “insufficient passion.” Sontag wrote, “My point is that illness is not a metaphor, and that the most truthful way of regarding illness —and the healthiest way of being ill — is one most purified of, most resistant to, metaphoric thinking.” From 1989, she brought the same conviction to the AIDS epidemic, showing how, as the dominant metaphors had it, people became ill because the disease was a divine punishment. She concluded, “With this illness, one that elicits so much guilt and shame, the effort to detach it from loaded meanings and misleading metaphors seems particularly liberating, even consoling,” Sontag’s word suggests that metaphors of illness are malign in a double way: they cast opprobrium on sick people and they hinder the rational and scientific apprehension that is needed to contain disease and provide care for people. To treat illness as a metaphor is to avoid or delay or even thwart the treatment of literal illness. Our own situation is different, but not unrelated. Our disinclination to see viruses as literal may have kept us from insisting on and observing the standards and practices that would prevent their spread. Enthralled with virus as metaphor and the terms associated with it — we ceased to be vigilant. Jetting around the world, we stopped washing our hands.

翻译：苏珊·桑塔格在《疾病的隐喻》一书中追溯了与疾病相关的隐喻的影响，尤其是结核病与癌症，以及这些隐喻如何无情地作用于病人，而使他们有时忽略了疾病的本质。据说，在上个世纪之交，人们认为“太多的热情”导致了结核病，而半个世纪后，人们则因心理压抑或“热情不足”而患上癌症。桑塔格写道：“在我看来，不能把疾病作为隐喻，对待疾病最正确、最健康的方式是彻底除却隐喻思维，并反对隐喻思维。”自1989年之后，她对流行病艾滋病也抱有同样的看法，展现了主流的隐喻思维使人们将疾病归为上天降下的惩罚。她总结道：“这种疾病会让人感到内疚和羞耻，将其从沉重的含义和误导性的隐喻中分离出来的努力似乎让人感到解放，甚至令人安慰。”桑塔格的话表明，疾病的隐喻具有两个负面影响：它们使病人们蒙羞，阻碍了人们对控制疾病和为人们提供护理所需的理性和科学的理解。 将疾病视为一个隐喻，就会使人们避免或延迟甚至阻碍对疾病本身的治疗。我们自己的情况不同，但并非没有关系。我们不愿意将病毒视为字面意义上的病毒，这可能使我们无法坚持和遵守防止病毒传播的标准和做法。我们被病毒的隐喻和与之相关的术语所误导了，而不再警惕病毒本身。人们到处游走使病毒有机可乘，也不采取防止病毒传播的正确做法。