How Cultures Determine the Effectiveness of Medicine

Paper Summary:

This paper examines two readings: Anne Fadiman's "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" and Brown et al.'s "Culture, Ethnicity and the Practice of Medicine". The paper endeavors to outline the reader's responses to them. Specifically, the paper notes how these course materials have forced the reader to reconsider the wisdom of allowing cultural biases to inform her understanding of what constitutes the proper practice of medicine.

From the Paper:

"What I hope to convey over the next few pages is how these two works have made me appreciate just how much our individual notions of medicine - chiefly, what works and what does not work - are culturally determined. More than that, these two works made me understand how it is less ignorance that leads some cultures to treat illnesses in different ways as it is cultural moorings that are almost impossible for any of us to eschew. "

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