Health and Disease
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v3i1.50Keywords:
Health and disease, Education abroad, medicineAbstract
A close examination of a healing tradition's assumptions about reality (metaphysics), ways of acquiring knowledge (epistemology), and systems of beliefs and values (ideology) are a powerful focus for a more general attempt to study culture (Beinfield and Koragold, 1991). The intention of this paper is not to offer a comprehensive view of any particular healing tradition. In the few pages that follow, it would be impossible to adequately describe even a single healing tradition. Rather, generalizations concerning the metaphysics, epistemology, and ideology of Western and non-Western healing traditions are used to suggest how healing traditions might be related to broader cultural contexts. Healing traditions outside of allopathic medicine are here referred to by the term "non-Western." This is not meant to suggest a "them vs. us" mentality. If anything it suggests a nonspiritual vs. spiritual dichotomy. Questions raised when different healing traditions encounter each other and sometimes conflict are powerful teaching tools. The hope is that these questions and generalizations might provide the beginning framework by which a student studying abroad could approach culture through issues of health and disease.
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