Prolegomenon To Future Work In Medical Anthropology Summary

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The complexity and evolving nature of the healthcare field are due to the interactions between health care professionals and the intersections between the different types of medical systems that exist. Depending on the severity of the illness an individual goes to a hospital or a clinic as a primary landmark to heal. Hospitals and clinics around the world focus on biomedicine as the main health practice in achieving optimal health. Biomedicine is known as a westernized- global dominant medical system that focuses on the biological aspects of an illness and is shaped by its cultural settings (Singer and Baer, 118-120). My parents became worried when I had a temperature of over one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit and had trouble swallowing due to the pain in my throat. The doctors, nurses, and healthcare professions who practice biomedicine provided a strong emphasis on the biological and physiological aspects …show more content…
Sickness and illness is not only about the diagnosis and antibiotics that the doctors prescribe but it also includes other aspects. Scheper-Hughes and Lock argue that “Sickness … is a form of communication … through which nature, society, and culture speak (Scheper-Hughes and Lock, 31). What struck me was the health professionals who were mainly focused on the diagnosis and the bacteria that caused it. They focused on how to treat the symptoms and the bacterium that infected my body rather than asking how I got sick, socially and culturally. They did not ask about the social conditions that might have affected my health. The doctors eventually prescribed me an antibiotic to help prevent the spread of the bacteria and to relieve the symptoms. However, a week prior to being admitted to the hospital I tried to go for alternative approaches to relieve, what I believed was a common

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