Richard W. Lieban

Traditional medical beliefs and the choice of practitioners in a Philippine city

Abstract This paper is concerned with traditional beliefs about a disease, its causality and proper treatment. The beliefs and their effects on medical judgements are described, judgements often marked by a choice of practitioners that can substantially increase risk to life. In these circumstances, beliefs that falsify advantage often are persuasive. Factors that help to account for this situation are discussed, and the problem is considered in relation to certain theoretical and practical aspects of the persistence of traditional medical systems.

From illness to symbol and symbol to illness

This paper explores two aspects of the relationship between illness and social symbols: one in which illnesses become symbols; the other, in which symbols become implicated in processes that eventuate in illness. Illness is first discussed as a symbol of social beliefs, attitudes, norms, values, and other social phenomena conceptualized in relation to them. This symbolization is analyzed as it relates to various dimensions of illness that lend themselves to figurative thinking. The paper then turns to processes through which social symbols may generate illness. In this regard, ways in which social symbols may attract people to behavior that puts their health at risk are discussed. The paper concludes with an analysis of how the development of illness may be affected by the relationship between social symbols and somatization.

Urban Philippine healers and their contrasting clienteles

This paper is concerned with medical pluralism in a Philippine setting. It reports on results of a study of four indigenous healers and their patients in Cebu City. The city is a modern medical center in the Philippines, with more than 500 practicing physicians. But its indigenous healers also treat numerous patients, and many patients utilize both physicians and healers during the course of an illness. Of the four healers discussed in this paper, two had the largest followings of any healers in the city at the time of the study, the other two had very modest practices. Significant social and medical contrasts between the clienteles of these healers are described in the paper, and the implications of these differences are discussed with respect to decisions people make about their health care in an area with diverse medical resourses.

Gender aspects of illness and practitioner use among Filipinos

Higher rates of reported illness among women than men and more frequent use of medical services by women in Western societies have been of considerable interest to medical sociology. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid in medical anthropology to gender differences in illness rates and utilization of medical services in non-Western areas. In a study of four urban Filipino healers and their patients, it was found that women outnumbered men in the clienteles of all the healers. However, the gender imbalance was significantly greater in one healers practice than in the practices of the other three. This quintessential case of a practice predominated by women is the focus of this paper. The paper examines various aspects of womens roles, including those that are given metaphorical expression in folk etiology. The special importance that these role factors assume in the practice of the healer appears to be implicated in the extraordinarily high ratio of women among her patients.

The 'psychic surgeon' and the schizophrenic patient: crisis in a 'medicodrama'.

This paper is concerned with a Filipino ‘psychic surgeon’ confronted by a particularly challenging case of a kind perhaps unprecedented in his practice. The paper describes and analyzes how the practitioner modified his usual clinical performance and adapted his actions to demands of an extremely difficult situation. The case is viewed in wider perspective relative to the significance of performative acts of healing in a pluralistic medical setting.