The document discusses the cultural construction of diseases and medicine. It explains that cultures teach their members about sickness, symptoms, causes, and appropriate responses. For example, malaria was once thought to be caused by "bad air" rather than a microbe. Culture-bound syndromes are illnesses recognized and treated within specific cultures. Medicine is also a historical phenomenon that has changed over time and varied between ancient cultures like Egypt, China, India and Babylon. Medical knowledge reflects the cultural perspectives of societies.

1. Abdu Nafan Aisul Muhlis
Neptun Code O8BTXH
MEDICINE
and CULTURE

2. • The culture of a society constructs the way members think and feel about
sickness and healing.
• They are taught about different sicknesses and their names, their
characteristic symptoms and courses, their causes and mitigating
circumstances, their cosmological and moral significance, and appropriate
responses
The Cultural Construction of Diseases
• Diseases are constructed with respect to cause (etiology)
• Disease’s cause is not always entirely biological, but also can be a
cultural constructions
• For example : Nowdays Malaria well known as caused by a microbe
(Plasmodium). Earlier it was thought to be unhealthy night air
(Malaria = mal + aria = “bad” + “air”), the disease was known as the
“Roman Fever” because of how frequently it spread through the
Empire and how pervasive it was.
• The metaphor of construction suggests that reality
is a structure of ideas built by society through
social interaction that may include informal as well
as formal education.
• The reality constructed by society makes sense of
the experience of sickness and healing to its
members

3. A Culture-Bound Syndrome (CBS)
according to the DSM-IV (1994), is a
group of symptoms recognised within
a specific culture, with accepted
treatments within these cultures. Such
illnesses are not universal, and they
are not caused by other neurological
or psychiatric conditions.
CBS is characterized by :
categorization as a disease in
the culture, widespread
familiarity in the culture, lack of
familiarity of the condition to
people in other cultures, no
objectively demonstrable
biochemical or tissue
abnormalities (signs), and the
condition is usually recognized
and treated by the folk
medicine of the culture
Folk
illness
A few examples follow:

4. Medicine is a Historical Phenomenon
Medicine (medical knowledge) is international.
The history of medicine shows how societies
have changed in their approach to illness and
disease from ancient times to the present.
Early medical traditions include those
of Babylon, China, Egypt, and India.
Medicine is a historical phenomenon. The history of
medicine began when The Egyptian Imhotep
described the diagnosis and treatment of 200
diseases in 2600 BC. Prehistoric of medicine : The
first known dentistry dates to c. 7000 BC in
Baluchistan where Neolithic dentists used flint-tipped
drills and bowstrings
References :
• Robert Hahn, Sickness and Healing: An
Anthropological Perspective.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1dszzh5
• A. Appels, Culture and Diseases.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277
953686900079
Medical knowledge can be a point of view
from nowhere since there is little record to
establish when and where plants were first
used for medicinal purposes (herbalism),
the use of plants as healing agents, as well
as clays and soils is ancient.