Walkin Over Medicine

A cultural look at the traditional health beliefs and practices of African Americans. Representing more than twenty years of anthropological research, Walkin' over Medicine, originally published by Westview Press in 1993, presents the results of Loudell F. Snow's community-based studies in Arizona and Michigan, work in two urban prenatal clinics, conversations and correspondence with traditional healers, and experience as a behavioral scientist in a pediatrics clinic. Snow also visited numerous pharmacies, grocery stores, and specialty shops in several major cities, accompanied families to church services, and attended weddings, baptisms, graduations, and funerals.

In this multidisciplinary study, Ann Folwell Stanford reads literature written by U.S. women of color to propose a rethinking of modern medical practice, arguing that personal health and social justice are inextricably linked. Drawing on feminist ethics to explore the work of eleven novelists, Stanford challenges medicine to position itself more deeply within the communities it serves, especially the poor and marginalized. However, she also argues that medicine must recognize its limits and join forces with the nonmedical community in the struggle for social justice. In literary representations of physical and emotional states of illness and health, Stanford identifies issues related to public health, medical ethics, institutionalized racism, women's health, domestic abuse, and social justice that are important to discussions about how to improve health and health care. She argues that in either direct or indirect ways, the eleven novelists considered here push us to see health not only as an individual condition but also as a complex network of individual, institutional, and social changes in which wellness can be a possibility for the majority rather than a privileged few. The novelists whose works are discussed are Toni Cade Bambara, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, Leslie Marmon Silko, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, Sandra Cisneros, Bebe Moore Campbell, Sapphire, Ana Castillo, and Octavia Butler.

Working Cures explores black health under slavery showing how herbalism, conjuring, midwifery and other African American healing practices became arts of resistance in the antebellum South and invoked conflicts.

Practitioners like you have been turning to Micozzi’s comprehensive CAM text for the past 20 years. Filled with the most up-to-date information on scientific theory and research and updated contributions from world experts, Fundamentals of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 5th Edition gives you a solid foundation of the therapies and evidence-based clinical applications for CAM – and expands your global perspective with new and updated chapters on healing systems from around the world. Dive into interesting discussions on massage, manual therapies and bodywork, yoga, chiropractic, osteopathy, herbal medicine, aromatherapy and essential oils therapy, "nature cure," naturopathy and naturopathic medicine, and nutrition and hydration. With its wide range of topics, this 20th anniversary edition is your ideal CAM reference! • A broad perspective traces CAM therapies from their beginnings to present day practices. • Clinical guides for selecting therapies, and new advances for matching the appropriate therapy to the individual patient, enables you to offer and/or recommend individualized patient care. • Expert contributors include well-known writers such as Kevin Ergil, Patch Adams, Joseph Pizzorno, and Marc Micozzi himself. • A unique synthesis of information, including historical usage, cultural and social analysis, current basic science theory and research, and a wide range of clinical investigations and observations, makes this text a focused, authoritative resource. • Suggested readings and references in each chapter list the best resources for further research and study. • Coverage of CAM therapies and systems includes those most commonly encountered or growing in popularity, so you can carefully evaluate each treatment. • An evidence-based approach focuses on treatments best supported by clinical trials and scientific evidence. • Observations from mechanisms of action to evidence of clinical efficacy answers questions of how, why, and when CAM therapies work. • Global coverage includes discussions of traditional healing arts from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. • NEW! Updated chapters feature new content and topics, including: challenges in integrative medicine, legal issues, CAM in the community, psychometric evaluation, placebo effect, stress management, and much more! • NEW! Updated guides on common herbal remedies in clinical practice, East and Southeast Asia, and native North and South America deliver the latest information. • NEW! Revised chapters with new contributors offer fresh perspectives on these important and relevant topics. • EXPANDED! Basic science content and new theory and research studies cover a wide range of sciences such as biophysics, biology and ecology, ethnomedicine, psychometrics, neurosciences, and systems theory. • NEW! New and expanded global ethnomedical systems include new content on Shamanism and Neo-Shamanism, Central and North Asia, Southeast Asia, Nepal and Tibet, Hawaii and South Pacific, Alaska and Pacific Northwest, and contemporary global healthcare.

In the first comprehensive exploration of the history and practice of folk medicine in the Appalachian region, Anthony Cavender melds folklore, medical anthropology, and Appalachian history and draws extensively on oral histories and archival sources from the nineteenth century to the present. He provides a complete tour of ailments and folk treatments organized by body systems, as well as information on medicinal plants, patent medicines, and magico-religious beliefs and practices. He investigates folk healers and their methods, profiling three living practitioners: an herbalist, a faith healer, and a Native American healer. The book also includes an appendix of botanicals and a glossary of folk medical terms. Demonstrating the ongoing interplay between mainstream scientific medicine and folk medicine, Cavender challenges the conventional view of southern Appalachia as an exceptional region isolated from outside contact. His thorough and accessible study reveals how Appalachian folk medicine encompasses such diverse and important influences as European and Native American culture and America's changing medical and health-care environment. In doing so, he offers a compelling representation of the cultural history of the region as seen through its health practices.

A "one size fits all" approach to health care doesn't work well, especially for America's extremely diverse population. This book provides a lively and accessible discussion of how and why a more flexible and culturally sensitive system of health care can—and must be—achieved. Notable anthropologist George Foster defined the first edition as "a very readable introductory text dealing with the sociocultural aspects of health," adding: "[T]he authors do a commendable job... . I have profited from reading The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine". With engaging examples, minimal jargon, and updated scholarship, the second edition of The Cultural Context of Health, Illness, and Medicine offers a comprehensive guide to the practice of culturally sensitive health care. Readers will see America's biomedically dominated health care system in a new light as the book reveals the changes wrought by increasing cultural diversity, technological innovation, and developments in care delivery. Written by a sociologist and an anthropologist with direct, hands-on experience in the health services, the volume tracks culture's influence on and relationship to health, illness, and health-care delivery via an examination of social structure, medical systems, and the need for—and challenges to—culturally sensitive care. Cultural differences are situated against social-class differences and related health inequities, as well as different needs and challenges throughout the life course. In prescribing caring that is more holistic, culturally sensitive, and cost-effective, the work promotes awareness of pressing issues for health care professionals—and the people they serve.