Anthropology › Section Q · Medical anthropology › Topic Q.2
Ethnomedicine
Every society has a body of knowledge about why people fall ill and how to restore them, from Ayurvedic physicians and Andean curanderos to hospital specialists. Ethnomedicine compares these systems on equal terms as cultural systems. This topic describes how healing systems work; it is not advice about any treatment.
In this topic
- Every society has a medicine
- Personalistic and naturalistic causes
- Balance and the humours
- Worked example: classifying explanations
- Healers and their training
- The effectiveness of symbols
- Biomedicine as a cultural system
- Medical pluralism
- Plants, knowledge and fairness
- Worked example: two systems, one child
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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