Western Scientific Medicine Research Articles

The cultural impact of the ‘AIDS’ test: The American experience

In March 1985 an ELISA test for serum antibodies to human T-cell leukemia/lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III) was licensed for use in screening commercial blood products. Controversy over the appropriate use and interpretation of this test continues, and some public health officials in the United States have advocated different counselling strategies for high and low risk individuals with the same test results. The response to AIDS illustrates that contagion has a social definition, even in the context of Western scientific medicine.

Health care for some: a Nigerian study of who gets what, where and why?

The persistent underdevelopment of health in the Third World belies the optimism of the "Health care for all by the year 2000" campaign. In order to understand the underdevelopment of health, it is essential to examine the historical evolution of specific health systems. These ideas are developed in a case study of health care in Kano State, Nigeria. The nature and contemporary development of the health care system, which includes state voluntary agency and private sector outlets for Western scientific medicine and a large and varied traditional medicine sector, are examined. Although the deepening health care crisis may potentially spur a reconsideration of priorities and strategies, past experience suggests that a stubborn retention of a pared-down and increasingly unjust version of the present system is more likely.

Psychiatry in New Britain

A psychiatric research project has been instituted in the Rabaul district of New Britain. A case report of a psychotic patient is presented as a basis for understanding psychiatric illness in the indigene. The role of traditional beliefs in illness are outlined and, although western beliefs and scientific medicine are gaining ground, the treatment of the mentally ill involves an active role for traditional healers. A hospital-oriented service may only be efficacious for more disturbed deviant individuals.

Western medicine in pre-Communist China.

WESTERN scientific medicine. as distinct from empirical Chinese medicine, did not receive any significant utilization in China until well into the third decade of this century, as illustrated by the following incident. I was assigned temporarily, in the spring of 1919, to the Department of Medicine of Yale-in-China at Changsha. The acting director, Dr. F. C. Yen, called me to go in consultation to see the governor of Human Province. His lobar pneumonia had reached the point where his attending old-style physicians had pronounced his case hopeless and, as customary, had withdrawn. The Taoist and Buddhist priests had been called and his coffin brought in to the inner courtyard. We decided the ninth-day would take place within 24 hours and ordered a servant to come to the hospital. He was given a bottle of colored water vith instructions for the patient to take large doses at frequent intervals. The crisis favored us and another supporter for Western medicine was made. This type of occurrence was frequently repeated in the writer's experience during the next 20 years. It was indicative of the slight hold of Western medicine in China which was only a court of last resort.