Question

All healers must learn their craft, and all healers must have verifiable outcomes (healed patients) as a result of their treatments. Medical Anthropologists study a wide variety of healers from diverse cultural settings. As you are aware, each culture has very unique definitions of illness and disease, as well as different expectations for being healed. As a result of these factors, we find very different techniques used for healing in these two broad categories of healers, indigenous, and biomedical. Yet even with the profound cultural differences, there are similarities in training and patient relationships between the two groups.   

Discuss what are the similarities and/or differences found in training between indigenous healers and biomedical healers? Furthermore, what are the similarities and/or differences in patient healer relationships?

Answer 1

One of the most important things about the indigenous healers is that they use their beliefs as the base for the medicine while only those who believe in the indigenous practices or those who belong to that particular group would benefit from it. Biomedical healers base their belief in science thus, they study the physical body for any illnesses and provide medicines not based on beliefs but a common medicine that would work on any physical body. Secondly, indigenous healers would rely on their experience in terms of prescribing the medicines that are found only in their own natural environment while the biomedical healers would use medicine from any corner of the world if it is effective. Finally, indigenous healers would attend people who share their beliefs while biomedical healers need to attend people from all over the world, if they live in a multicultural society such as, the US.

Thank you for the question. Please rate if you like the answer.