Disease and the condition of cultural diversity

Abstract

Medical experience can be examined in the function of the element of cultural text. In “a great while” perspective physiognomic and written cultural texts discover the variety of ways of symbolic disease interpretation. In the multiple space of ethnocultural texts “virus in a car” can serve as a metaphor of disease in the North American culture; the Romantic Movement tradition influences medical experience formation in Germany; particular attention to the cardiovascular pathology and respiratory diseases as the manifestation of some cultural characteristics is specified in Russian traditions. If some disease is not a contextually emerged fact, but - in anthropological perspective - an element of life, and in the life itself multifaceted self-definition personality is revealed, then the important factor of medical care should become the cultural competence of medical staff, connected with the perception of the patient’s world individuality and allowing actualization of this potential.