On the specificity of healing functions: A study of diagnosis in three faith healing institutions in Feira (Bahia, Brazil)

Ndolamb Ngokwey

Social Science & Medicine, 1989, vol. 29, issue 4, 515-526

Abstract: This essay examines three popular ethnomedical institutions in Brazil: faith healers, Protestant evangelicals, and the practitioners of one of the Japanese new religions. In particular, I compare the relative degrees of diagnostic specificity in their practices. Medical anthropologists have neglected the analysis of this aspect of practice, although I show in the present paper its utility for comparative work. Also, I show that diagnostic specificity is congruent with an ontological view of illness and an active role for the healer, while lack of diagnostic specificity is congruent with a very general form of therapy, such as is found in the Seicho-no-Ie religion. Traditional rezadores, in contrast, use a high degree of diagnostic specificity.

Keywords: Brazil; religious; healing; diagnostic; specificity; ethnomedicine (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1989
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