Traditional Healing System
A PROPOSED APPLICATION OF ETHNOMEDICAL MODELS TO TRADITIONAL HEALING SYSTEMS
Stanley Kipper
Ethnomedicine has become a topic of intensive study in recent years due, in part, to the work of the World Health Organization and other groups attempting to facilitate cooperation between indigenous practitioners and those trained in Western allopathic biomedicine. This chapter describes two ethnomedical systems (the North American Navajo tradition and the South American Peruvian Pachakuti curanderismo) in terms of two different models, one designed by Siegler and Osmond (1974), and one designed by a task force of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Each of these indigenous systems are found to be comprehensive, covering each facet of the models, and pointing the way for possible collaboration between allopathic biomedicine and various indigenous systems of healing, a project that has accelerated due to public demand (Iljas, 2006, p. 190). The term “ethnomedicine” refers to the comparative study of indigenous (or traditional) medical systems. Typical ethnomedical topics include causes of sickness, medical practitioners and their roles, and specific treatments utilized. The explosion of ethnomedical literature has been stimulated by an increased awareness of the consequences of the forced displacement and/or acculturation of indigenous peoples, the recognition of indigenous health concepts as a means of maintaining ethnic identities, and the search for new medical treatments and technologies. In addition, Kleinman (1995) finds ethnographic studies an “appropriate means of representing pluralism...and of drawing upon those aspects of health and suffering to resist the positivism, the reductionism, and the naturalism that biomedicine and, regrettably, the wider society privilege”(p. 195). In his exhaustive study of cross-cultural practices, Torrey (1986) concluded that effective treatment inevitably contains one or more of four fundamental
Stanley Kipper
Ethnomedicine has become a topic of intensive study in recent years due, in part, to the work of the World Health Organization and other groups attempting to facilitate cooperation between indigenous practitioners and those trained in Western allopathic biomedicine. This chapter describes two ethnomedical systems (the North American Navajo tradition and the South American Peruvian Pachakuti curanderismo) in terms of two different models, one designed by Siegler and Osmond (1974), and one designed by a task force of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Each of these indigenous systems are found to be comprehensive, covering each facet of the models, and pointing the way for possible collaboration between allopathic biomedicine and various indigenous systems of healing, a project that has accelerated due to public demand (Iljas, 2006, p. 190). The term “ethnomedicine” refers to the comparative study of indigenous (or traditional) medical systems. Typical ethnomedical topics include causes of sickness, medical practitioners and their roles, and specific treatments utilized. The explosion of ethnomedical literature has been stimulated by an increased awareness of the consequences of the forced displacement and/or acculturation of indigenous peoples, the recognition of indigenous health concepts as a means of maintaining ethnic identities, and the search for new medical treatments and technologies. In addition, Kleinman (1995) finds ethnographic studies an “appropriate means of representing pluralism...and of drawing upon those aspects of health and suffering to resist the positivism, the reductionism, and the naturalism that biomedicine and, regrettably, the wider society privilege”(p. 195). In his exhaustive study of cross-cultural practices, Torrey (1986) concluded that effective treatment inevitably contains one or more of four fundamental
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