PMID: 11623594Oct 20, 2001Paper

Heaps of health, metaphysical fitness: Ayurveda and the ontology of good health in medical anthropology

Current Anthropology
J S Alter

Abstract

Because most scholars take it for granted that medicine is concerned with healing and problems of ill health, the way in which various medical systems define good health has not been adequately studied. Moreover, good health as such is usually regarded as a natural, normative state of being even by most medical anthropologists, who otherwise take a critical, relativist perspective on the subject of illness, pain, and disease. Using the case of Ayurvedic medicine, this article shows that there is a very different way of looking at the question of how health is embodied. This perspective is proactive and concerned with overall fitness rather than reactive and primarily concerned with either illness or disease. The argument presented here therefore seeks to go beyond the limiting--although extremely useful--orientation of remedial health care and suggest a radical challenge to some of the most basic ontological assumptions in the cross-cultural comparative study of medical systems.

Citations

Feb 3, 2015·Anthropology & Medicine·Maarten Bode
Jun 22, 2016·Anthropology & Medicine·Chithprabha Kudlu
May 17, 2017·Anthropology & Medicine·Maarten Bode, Prasan Shankar
Dec 19, 2018·Journal of Bioethical Inquiry·Bjørn Hofmann

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