Medicine, Rationality and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures)

Medicine supposedly offers a scientific account of the human body and of illness, and it follows that scientific medicine treats all forms of folk medicine as little more than superstitious practices. Professor Good argues that this impoverished perspective neglects many facets of Western medical practice and obscures its kinship with healing in other traditions. Drawing on his own anthropological research in America and the Middle East, his analysis of illness and medicine explores the role of cultural factors in the experience of illness and the practice of medicine.

Biomedicine is often thought to provide a universal scientific account of the human body and illness. In this view, non-Western and folk medical system are regarded as system of 'belief' and and subtly discounted.