The Anthropology of Medicine: From Culture to Method

(Paperback, 3rd edition)

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This revised edition of this significant text in medical anthropology contains additional material on subjects as diverse as aging, creativity, and ideology. It is both an introduction to the growing field of medical anthropology and a reference work, providing perspectives to our understanding of both Western and non-Western medicine, from the biochemical and physiological aspects of health care in preindustrialized cultures to cultural and ideological factors inherent in past and present Western medical care. Additional chapters focus on ethnobotany, placebo and pain, shamanism, and psychiatry. The contributors to this volume examine the acculturation process of healer, physician and patient in diverse cultural settings. They explore the social and cultural context of medical events as well as the process of medical thought and problem solving. Medicine, they illustrate, embraces or is embraced by both the cultural and biological dimensions of mankind. From this perspective they show how human belief, knowledge and action structure the experience of disease and affect the ways in which doctors, healers and patients experience illness and influence the matrix of decision making. This book is useful for students and professionals in anthropology, medicine and all social science.

Reviews

The analytic and philosophical depth of this book should appeal to social scientists and higher-level medical anthropology students.-Medical Anthropology Quarterly
"The analytic and philosophical depth of this book should appeal to social scientists and higher-level medical anthropology students."-Medical Anthropology Quarterly

Author Bio

LOLA ROMANUCCI-ROSS is Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego. A pioneer in the field of medical anthropology, she has written widely on the subject. She is the author of several other books, including One Hundred Towers: An Italian Odyssey of Cultural Survival (1991) and Mead's Other Manus (1988), both published by Bergin & Garvey, and the third edition of Ethnic Identity: Creation, Conflict and Accomodation (with George De Vos). DANIEL E. MOERMAN is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. He is the author of numerous articles on ethnobotany and the definitive work on the medicinal use of plants by Native Americans. LAURENCE R. TANCREDI is clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University. He is author of numerous articles and books on legal issues in medicine and medical ethics. He is also in the practice of psychiatry in New York City.