Alternative Healing: An Anthropological Analysis
To understand the cultural context of an illness is to be better prepared to treat it. Anthropological approaches to healing highlight what various cultures both prize and abhor. When a culture is analyzed for how it handles its sick, the diseased and dying, what is uncovered are the culture's foundational values. What this comparative analysis of healing situated in diverse cultures will highlight is that
individuals are most likely to regain their health according to culturally sanctioned norms.
Alternative medicine is a more viable position in the eyes of many patients precisely because traditional medicine is failing to provide treatment, hope, or a consistent point of view. In some cases, turning to alternative medicine may be seen as an act of desperation, while in others it might be considered a reasonable form of experimentation with a proven method of treatment. It necessarily entails a certain cultural challenge as well in that cultural norms prevalent in the West are often quite different from the cultural norms of the regions where the alternative methods derive. Even as recently as 30 years ago western medicine could claim it was winning the war against disease. As diagnostic techniques advanced, the great epidemics seemed to vanish (Inglis & West, 1983, 6). While drugs were largely responsible for the halting of epidemics, this should not have served as the foundational basis of western medicine since Victorian times. McKeown (1983) asserts that antibiotics arrived just in time to work in tandem with Victorian reforms such as bringing clean water into the city, building sewers, and educating the poor about the benefits of better hygiene and diet (McKeown in Inglis & West, 1983, 7). Yet, these same miracle drugs have proven to be nearly completely ineffective against degenerative disorders such as arthritis. Airola (1983) listed such astonishing ...