This book started as a PhD thesis, Ideology and Aetiology: RSI, an Epidemic of Craft Palsy. I want to thank my supervisor and intellectual guide, Professor Randall Albury, at the School of Science and Technology Studies at the University of New South Wales, the Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine in London, the late Roy Porter, Bill Bynum, who read early drafts, and my examiners, Edward Shorter, Arthur Kleinman and Stephanie Short, who legitimated my position. I am grateful to John Rowe, who insisted it should be published, UNSW Press for being so persuaded and my editor, Carl Harrison-Ford, for making it comprehensible. I am grateful to my extended family, to my friends and colleagues who encouraged me.
I particularly want to thank the scoffers as they forced me to reproduce all these orthodox, unoriginal, well-established, conventional ideas in an environment where the whole world seemed to be out of step with them. I also apologise those who recognise their words and ideas represented here, as many references that were cited in the thesis had to be left out of this book.