New Data on Intracultural Variability: The Hot-Cold Concept of Medicine and Illness

Abstract

Anthropologists have frequently described the hot-cold concept as important and universal in popular Latin American medical theory. In the hot-cold concept of humoral medicine, health is believed to be a balance between and cold elements in the body. When the body's equilibrium is upset by being too hot or too cold, illness can occur. Balance can be restored by treatment with foods, remedies, or medicines of the opposite valence. This relationship between disease and treatment has sometimes complicated the delivery of Western health care to Latin patients. Recent articles cite a need for the collection of more systematic, empirical data regarding the hot-cold classification system (Logan 1977), as well as a need to measure and account for intracultural variation (Foster 1979) to achieve a better understanding of the hot-cold system.