Medical Anthropology - Ethnomedicine

Medical Anthropology ANTH 2301 Ethnomedicine The cultural knowledge of a civilization regarding illness, sickness, and disease management is known as ethnomedicine. This involves identifying the signs and symptoms of sickness that raise a health concern and the culturally acceptable approach for obtaining medical attention. Belief systems and religious behaviours are sometimes strongly associated with ethnomedical systems. Rituals and natural remedies derived from the surrounding environment can be used for healing. In an ethnomedical system, healing experts are educated professionals who go through an apprenticeship or training programme. Ethnomedicinal healers include midwives, doulas, herbalists, surgeons, shamans, bonesetters, and others whose healing practices were part of global cultural traditions before the advent of biomedicine. Anthropologists often observe that healers who practise ethnomedicine are skilled at both healing and inflicting damage through physical and occasionally metaphysical methods. Instead than emphasising "traditional" medicine, ethnomedicine enables the comparison of medical systems across cultural boundaries. Certain treatment modalities utilise spiritual understanding as a medicinal tool. In shamanism, the shaman of the culture serves as an ambassador when individuals voluntarily access the spirit realm to heal illnesses. Eliminating the ailment or at the very least figuring out where it came from may be the aim. Similar to this, spirituality permeates the healing process in faith healing, which depends on a common understanding of religion and regional beliefs. In the contexts of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Shamanism, faith healing often takes the form of ridding people of evil spirits. Societies that practise biomedicine frequently also practise various types of spiritual healing. Herbs, foods, and other natural compounds are used in ethnopharmacology to treat or cure illnesses. Pharmaceutical firms searching for novel biomedical therapies are presently very interested in traditional ethnopharmacological treatments. Ethnopharmacological traditions are the source of several commonly used medications. Willow bark is a common remedy for headaches and is used in Chinese medicine, traditional European medicine, and Native American medicine. The world was first introduced to Bayer aspirin in 1897 when scientist Dr. Felix Hoffmann, who was employed by the Bayer firm, identified acetylsalicylic acid as the willow bark's primary painkilling component. Traditional ecological knowledge, often known as TEK, is the medicinal knowledge of many plants, animals, and other resources in an ecosystem that serves as the foundation for ethnomedicine. Numerous societies have succeeded in transforming intricate knowledge of their surroundings—such as the location of water and the seasons during which particular plants grow—into sophisticated and functional ethnomedical systems (Houde 2007). Victoria Reyes-Garcia carried out an extensive investigation of Amazonian TEK in 2006 in collaboration with other researchers. Victoria and her associates gathered data on edible and medicinal plants from 650 research subjects who lived in communities around the Maniqui River in the Amazon River basin. Another great illustration of an ethnomedical system that primarily utilises TEK and ethnopharmacology is the system of traditional medicine in China. While many Chinese people use biomedicine to treat particular medical conditions, many also use traditional Chinese medicine to maintain their equilibrium. Patients are usually the ones who decide which health system to consult, although occasionally physicians may advise patients to see a traditional apothecary, and vice versa, resulting in a complementary medical system that incorporates both methods. Previously restricted by geography, a traditional Chinese doctor might utilise materials from anywhere in the globe, even dried tiger parts or plants from another region of China, but in today's globalised world, that is not the case. As an ethnomedical system, Chinese traditional medicine is greatly impacted by environment and culture. It harnesses many natural forces to achieve the goal of balancing the body. To prepare medication, traditional Chinese medicine uses a wide range of materials, including ginseng, dinosaur bones, tiger livers, and cicadas shells. In this system, healers frequently play a similar function to Western chemists, creating a wide range of medications, including tablets, tonics, and balms. A traditional Chinese medicinal healer and a biological chemist differ in terms of the instruments and materials they employ as well as their underlying presumptions on the origins and remedies of different illnesses. Traditional environmental knowledge is employed both alongside and in instead of biomedicine worldwide. Western science's cultural framework and the history of Europe and North America have greatly influenced the ethnomedical system known as biomedicine. It makes extensive use of biochemistry and biology. Scientifically proven treatments for illnesses and wounds are provided by biomedicine. Medical experts that specialise in biomedicine rely on the outcomes of clinical trials that adhere to the scientific method's tenets when evaluating a treatment's viability. It should be mentioned that this evaluation still calls for trust because each health care provider is depending on the work of others rather than performing their own study. While other ethnomedical systems invest their confidence in a god, the power of the healer, or tried-and-true therapies handed down through traditional ecological knowledge, biomedicine lays its faith in the scientific method. Biomedicine is an ethnomedical system influenced by Western cultural values and history; it is not a culture unto itself. Science's aim of impartiality is not met by biomedicine. Medical anthropologists have compiled a wealth of evidence demonstrating how systemic biases like sexism, racism, and classism infiltrate biomedicine, affecting its efficacy and sustaining health disparities. Nevertheless, biomedicine is frequently used in the West as a benchmark for other ethnomedical systems. Medical anthropologists have criticised biomedicine for taking precedence over alternative kinds of treatment and cultural knowledge. Because biomedicine is clinical and grounded on scientific understanding, it is frequently assumed to be better than other medical specialties. However, a patient must trust and believe in science and the biomedical system in order to accept this claimed superiority. Relying on the biomedical system will worsen a person's health results if they have scepticism for biomedicine, whether from a negative experience with the biomedical model or a preference for another ethnomedical method. Additionally, biomedicine has the power to undermine and upend long-standing cultural cures and therapies. For instance, classifying someone as mentally ill in accordance with biological terminology strips them of their agency and takes away their power in a culture that treats schizophrenia by giving the sufferer spiritual authority and considering them as a member of the society. The most successful strategy is typically a hybrid one, in which biomedicine collaborates with and supports ethnomedicine rather than assuming a dominant role. The sick are given the freedom to select the therapies they believe would benefit them the most under a hybrid paradigm. When opposing ethnomedical traditions coexist and create distinctive health subcultures with their own customs, beliefs, and organisations, medical pluralism takes place. Ethnomedicinal systems coexist and often integrate biomedicine in many modern civilizations. Although biomedicine is the predominant health care system in the United States, practitioners of Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, homoeopathy, chiropractic medicine, and other ethnomedical systems from across the world are also available to the public in many major cities. In modern Western civilization, medical pluralism is exemplified by many practices such as using essential oils derived from traditional medicine to improve health, yoga as a physical and mental therapy, and stress relief, among many others. Instead of choose between biomedicine and ethnomedicine, modern civilizations frequently combine the two. Nonetheless, people may not always have the freedom to choose, or they may only have a restricted capacity to do so, due to the privilege and medical authority of biomedicine. Cultural tensions in medically diverse nations are well-exemplified by Anne Fadiman's (1998) The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, which delves into the disputes over the care of a Hmong kid with epilepsy between the parents and a tiny Californian hospital. Colonialization has been accompanied by biomedicine in many regions of the world, and biomedicine has supplanted traditional health methods. The repression of Hawaii's indigenous ethnomedical system is discussed in Juliet McMullin's (2010) book Healthy Ancestor: Embodied Inequality and the Revitalization of Native Hawaiian Health as a persistent residue of the state's colonial past. The book depicts modern Hawaiians' attempts to return to the wholesome way of life of their forefathers before colonisation. Although biomedical health care workers today are more receptive to Hawaii's ethnomedical practices than their forebears were, McMullin comes to the conclusion that more has to be done.