What role do diseases like cancer, tuberculosis, or AIDS, which often have a fatal outcome, play in our imagination? The crucial factor is the linguistic approach to illness, the often hostile and inappropriate way of thinking and judging in metaphors. Susan Sontag advocates for the demystification of terrifying diseases. For the first time, this volume publishes the closely related essays 'Illness as Metaphor' and 'AIDS and Its Metaphors' together. Each essay, both individually and collectively, serves as a compelling argument for the attempt to free oneself from the terror of deadly illness - through the demystification of language. Susan Sontag has traced the metaphors and images of illness that show that cancer - and in earlier times tuberculosis - are not only viewed as deadly but are also identified with death itself.