Disease Etiologies in Non‐Western Medical Systems
1976/12/01 by George M. Foster · 456 citations
Arts and Humanities · Medicine · #Alternative medicine #Disease #Empathy and Medical Education #Epistemology #Etiology #Linguistics #MAGIC (telescope) #Medicine #Mental Health and Psychiatry #Misfortune #Nothing #Pathology #Philosophy #Psychiatry #Traditional Chinese medicine #Western medicine
paper · doi:10.1525/aa.1976.78.4.02a00030
published in American Anthropologist 78(4), 773-782 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 1976/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract
This paper argues that disease etiology is the key to cross‐cultural comparison of non‐Western medical systems. Two principal etiologies are identified: personalistic and naturalistic. Correlated with personalistic etiologies are the belief that all misfortune, disease included, is explained in the same way; illness, religion, and magic are inseparable; the most powerful curers have supernatural and magical powers, and their primary role is diagnostic. Correlated with naturalistic etiologies are the belief that disease causality has nothing to do with other misfortunes; religion and magic are largely unrelated to illness; the principal curers lack supernatural or magical powers, and their primary role is therapeutic . [disease, religion, and magic; ethnomedicine, medical anthropology, non‐Western medical systems, shamans]
Cited by
- Towards culturally inclusive healthcare in Peru: Mapping epistemic concepts in contemporary Indigenous Amazonian medicine—Traditional healers’ perspectives
- Enhancing effective healthcare communication in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Considerations for research, teaching, policy, and practice
- Against Disease, Suffering, and Other Plagues: the Magic-healing Role of Thunderstones in the Middle Ages and Modern Times
- The History of Biological Weapons Use: What We Know and What We Don't
- Medicinal plants in the Dominican Republic and their possible role in public health care
- People, plants and health: a conceptual framework for assessing changes in medicinal plant consumption
- Illness causal beliefs in Turkish immigrants. [europepmc]
- The acceptability of intermittent preventive treatment of malaria in infants (IPTi) delivered through the expanded programme of immunization in southern Tanzania. [europepmc]
- Ethnomedicine and ethnobotany of fright, a Caribbean culture-bound psychiatric syndrome. [europepmc]
- Inherent illnesses and attacks: an ethnographic study of interpretations of childhood Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) in Manhiça, southern Mozambique. [europepmc]
- People, plants and health: a conceptual framework for assessing changes in medicinal plant consumption. [europepmc]
- Cultural beliefs on disease causation in the Philippines: challenge and implications in genetic counseling. [europepmc]
- Fischer's Lexicon of Slavic beliefs and customs: a previously unknown contribution to the ethnobotany of Ukraine and Poland. [europepmc]
- Treating infants with frigg: linking disease aetiologies, medicinal plant use and care-seeking behaviour in southern Morocco. [europepmc]
- Beliefs and perception of ill-health causation: a socio-cultural qualitative study in rural North-Eastern Ethiopia. [europepmc]
- I. INTRODUCTION: UNDERSTANDING MEDICINES AND MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS. [europepmc]
- Rituals of Containment: Many Pandemics, Body Politics, and Social Dramas During COVID-19 in Pakistan. [europepmc]
- The Substance of Cold: Indonesians' Use of Cold Weather Theory to Explain Everyday Illnesses. [europepmc]
- Community-Level Experiences, Understandings, and Responses to COVID-19 in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of Qualitative and Ethnographic Studies. [europepmc]
- COVID-19 Pandemic: The Local Community Perceptions and Associated Risks in Guji Society, Southern Ethiopia. [europepmc]
- Medical pluralism, healthcare utilization and patient wellbeing: The case of Akan cancer patients in Ghana. [europepmc]
- Medicinal plants of the upper Aswa River catchment of northern Uganda - a cultural crossroads. [europepmc]
- Academic history, domains and distribution of the hot-cold system in Mexico. [europepmc]
- Animacy semantic network supports causal inferences about illness. [europepmc]
- Negotiating illness through faith: Religious narratives of cancer etiology among patients and caregivers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. [europepmc]
Related