#101
Title: Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology #1: Social Lives of Medicines
Authors: Susan Reynolds Whyte, Sjaak van der Geest, & Anita Hardon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2003
Genre: anthropology, medicine
208 pages
A professional/technical text in medical anthropology, but still accessible to the interested lay reader. It approaches the meaning of pharmaceuticals and medical technologies (materia medica) in different cultural contexts, including developed as well as developing countries. The authors hold the tension between patients' uncritical trust of doctors' knowledge, and doctors' (and other medical personnels') actual knowledge. My conclusion based on the book is that no one knows much of anything in actual practice, and that we are far more likely to make medical decisions based on cultural salience and analogy than on any sort of objective appraisal or pharmacokinetics and mechanisms of action. There is an excellent chapter on rural injectionists that should be required reading for people involved in HIV and hepatitis reduction. Dry, but worth it. A good companion to Craig's Familiar Medicine: Everyday Health Knowledge and Practice in Today's Vietnam, which I'll get around to finishing and review one of these days.
Title: Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology #1: Social Lives of Medicines
Authors: Susan Reynolds Whyte, Sjaak van der Geest, & Anita Hardon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2003
Genre: anthropology, medicine
208 pages
A professional/technical text in medical anthropology, but still accessible to the interested lay reader. It approaches the meaning of pharmaceuticals and medical technologies (materia medica) in different cultural contexts, including developed as well as developing countries. The authors hold the tension between patients' uncritical trust of doctors' knowledge, and doctors' (and other medical personnels') actual knowledge. My conclusion based on the book is that no one knows much of anything in actual practice, and that we are far more likely to make medical decisions based on cultural salience and analogy than on any sort of objective appraisal or pharmacokinetics and mechanisms of action. There is an excellent chapter on rural injectionists that should be required reading for people involved in HIV and hepatitis reduction. Dry, but worth it. A good companion to Craig's Familiar Medicine: Everyday Health Knowledge and Practice in Today's Vietnam, which I'll get around to finishing and review one of these days.
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