"For thousands of years, healers have used plants to cure illness. Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now W…
"For thousands of years, healers have used plants to cure illness. Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now W…
Yaktovil is an elaborate healing ceremony employed by Sinhalas in Sri Lanka to dispel the effects of the eyesight of a pantheon of malevolent supernatural figures known as yakku. Scott's investigation of yaktovil and yakku within the Sinhala cosmology is also an inquiry into the…
The practice of curanderismo or Mexican American folk medicine is part of a historically and culturally important health care system deeply rooted in native Mexican healing techniques. This is the first book to describe the practice from an insider's point of view, based on the …
"As these studies show, every instance of the introduction of Western medicine into non-Western societies has been contested. Disputes have taken place over the presence, nature and causation of disease; over appropriate therapies; over the legitimacy of native, foreign and fore…
The performance of healing is a collection of essays by anthropologists covering a wide range of medical, holistic, and religious aspects of healing and death. The contributors broaden the field of medical anthropology by demonstrating that healing involves the senses in treatme…
The performance of healing is a collection of essays by anthropologists covering a wide range of medical, holistic, and religious aspects of healing and death. The contributors broaden the field of medical anthropology by demonstrating that healing involves the senses in treatme…
As more and more Asian medical practices cross into Western culture through the popularity of yoga and herbalism, and as Western medicine finds its way east in the form of plastic surgery, these systems of meaning become inextricably interrelated. The essays in this volume consi…
"In Other-Worldly, Mei Zhan argues that the discourses and practices called "traditional Chinese medicine" are made through, rather than prior to, translocal encounters and entanglements. Zhan spent a decade following practitioners, teachers, and advocates of Chinese medicine th…
Traditional Chinese medicine is often portrayed as an enduring system of therapeutic knowledge that has become globalized. The author argues that the discourses and practices called "traditional Chinese medicine" are made through, rather than prior to, translocal encounters and …
Bioprospecting - the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance - has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But ca…
Bioprospecting - the exchange of plants for corporate promises of royalties or community development assistance - has been lauded as a way to develop new medicines while offering southern nations and indigenous communities an incentive to preserve their rich biodiversity. But ca…