chapter 3: Healers and Healing

what does healing simply mean? to restore to health The physiology of bone healing is not mediated by culture. Like other interpersonal relationships in human societies, that between the healer and the sufferer is influenced by prevailing cultural norms and values. Ways in which culture influences healing: 1. Almost all cultures specify healing roles that are recognized and legitimized by members. 2. medical pluralism Medical pluralism when multiple healing systems exist within a single culture The survival of alternative or complementary medicines in societies where biomedicine is dominant depends on a host of factors: the efficacy or effectiveness of treatment, the ability to complement standard biomedical treatments, their linkage to other cultural trends, or the presistance of cultural traditions that predate the dominance of biomedicine how have most state-level healing traditions developed? In most state-level societes, there have long been multiple healing traditions that have arisen from historical exchanges with other societies. How are biomedicine similar and different from traditional medicine? Biomedicine is biologically based, while traditional medicine could be considered supernatural. They are both similar in the approach to treatment of conditions that have an "obvious" cause. Titles (ms. or Mr. or Dr.) and surgeons and doctors the surgeon trade was degraded for the very "obvious" nature of their interventions, while the physicians took on a more shamanistic role to deal with internal problems with causes and cures that were hidden from view. So physicians were called Dr. and sureons were called Mr./Ms. However, at the beginning of the 19th century, surgury became a more respected, high-status, lucrative field. At that point, it served surgeons to retain the "Mr." to distinguish themselves from other kinds of doctors The three ways that the body can be viewed: 1.) There is the individual body-self. This is the individual as we typically think of it--the body separate from other individuals--which experiences health and illness over the course of a lifetime. 2.)The social body. In this sense, the body becomes a symbol modeling the relationship between a society or culture and the natural world. 3. Political body. Bodies and their actions (reproduction, work, leisure, etc.) are controlled by the power apparatuses of the culture in which they live. Diagnosis Diagnosis is in itself an important part of therapy, and the arrival at an acceptable diagnosis is an essential part of a successful healer-patient relationship, in both biomedical and traditional contexts. treatment treatment does not always lead to wellness, as the condition may be beyond treatment or the results of forces working beyond the healer-patient dynamic (like an affliction of the social body or the body politic) order of treating the sick diagnosis -> treatment -> From the perspective of biomedicine, many traditional or alternative forms of treatment appear to offer mainly palliative effects. In other words, the proximate biological cause of the disease itself is not addressed but the patient is made to feel more comfortable physically, psychologically, or both. Biomedicine has achieved its prominence due in part to its real successes in ameliorating ill health based on a biologically based, positivist, and scientific worldview even though it has historically paid little attention to the more global well-being of patients or to the ultimate causes of illnesses (economic conditions, nutrition, etc.) evidence-based medicine an intellectual movement within biomedicine initiated in the 1990s that advocates that patient care be based explicitly on the best-available clinical research evidence; also recognizes that patients have rights in making clinical decisions about their care. The existence of the evidence-based medicine movement demonstrates that even within the confines of biomedicine, the healing experience will vary according to local physician "cultures." Cystic Fibrosis (CF) excerpt's main idea: This excerpt demonstrated the vagaries of the healing experience: even with an explicit program of standardized care, significant variation arises among treatment centers. This has to do with the "bell curve" of life; some doctors will be better than others even if the playing field is completely level. Most doctors are average, but why should patients accept "average" care if better care is available elsewhere? what is a common theme of becoming a spiritual leader? some sort of divination is involved. Three different routes that a person becomes a spiritual leader among the Mayan Zinacanteco in Mexico? 1. Visitation during a dream. A potential healer has 3 dreams of being summoned before the ancestral gods and given a list of patients he must cure. (The social ones..) 2. A potential healer is identified as such by the expert healer who is treating him or her for an illness. The patient is told he/she must become a healer if they want to get better. 3. when a person has a seizure. *Note: Not all people who have seizures become spiritual leaders. to become or not to become a spiritual leader Most people would not reject the offer to be a spiritual leader, despite the extensive training involved. It is a high status-role in the community, and being selected to be a spiritual leader is thought to be a sign of good moral character Healers can discover that they "have the power" or can hear "the call" in a variety of different ways: exs.) -being the 7th son or daughter. - "born with the veil" or when the baby is born intact with the amniotic sac (when the water didn't break). when do some African Americans know they have become healers? The process of becoming a healer occurs during the therapeutic process. Healers have reported hearing the word of God during a difficult time in their lives and were simultaneously healed. You might have made a bargain with God, if you cure____ then I promise to become a healer.