Medicine
Disease and ill health are viewed in terms of obvious surface symptoms (like fever, rash, swelling) and the "underlying causes" of those symptoms (e.g., witchcraft, being caught by a swearing medicine). Symptoms can be relieved by traditional or Western medicine, but these have no effect on the underlying cause(s), which require divination and the proper supernatural response.
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Famous quotes containing the word medicine:
“Hygiene is the corruption of medicine by morality. It is impossible to find a hygienest who does not debase his theory of the healthful with a theory of the virtuous.... The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.”
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (b. 1926)
“I have noticed that doctors who fail in the practice of medicine have a tendency to seek one another’s company and aid in consultation. A doctor who cannot take out your appendix properly will recommend you to a doctor who will be unable to remove your tonsils with success.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)