Healing Logics: Culture and Medicine in Modern Health Belief Systems

by Erika Brady

Scholars in folklore and anthropology are more directly involved in various aspects of medicine—such as medical education, clinical pastoral care, and negotiation of transcultural issues—than ever before. Old models of investigation that artificially isolated "folk medicine," "complementary and alternative medicine," and "biomedicine" as mutually exclusive have proven too limited in exploring the real-life complexities of health belief systems as they observably exist and are applied by contemporary Americans. Recent research strongly suggests that individuals construct their health belief systmes from diverse sources of authority, including community and ethnic tradition, education, spiritual beliefs, personal experience, the influence of popular media, and perception of the goals and means of formal medicine. Healing Logics explores the diversity of these belief systems and how they interact—in competing, conflicting, and sometimes remarkably congruent ways. This book contains essays by leading scholars in the field and a comprehensive bibliography of folklore and medicine.

Genres: History Of Medicine

296 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 1802

Reviews

[Denise Kettering · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting collection of essays related to various modes of healing outside of the medical system. The essays demonstrate that most people already use a variety of folk medication, home remedy, and the medical system. The book highlights differences in places and practitioners, competing health paradigms, new age medical appropriations, and some narratives of healing. There is also a substantial bibliography of sources.