Table 5.

 Categories of health problems according to Cornwell’s book Hard earned lives: accounts of health and illness from East London³²

	Features
Normal illnesses	Acute conditions that medicine recognises and treats successfully. Childhood ailments and commonplace, relatively minor infections are typical examples.
Real illnesses	Chronic disabling conditions or more severe or life threatening conditions that medicine has a partial ability to treat. Conditions such as diabetes or epilepsy that have a clear medical diagnosis, a significant effect on the patient, and that require ongoing treatment are typical of “real illnesses.” Seeking medical advice is thus an appropriate response to having a real illness.
Health problems that are not illnesses	Problems associated with normal processes (for example, age related arthritis or hearing loss) or stem from the person’s lifestyle (e.g. a backache in a man with a heavy job). “Health problems that are not illnesses” are to be “coped with”; seeking medical advice is not necessarily appropriate.