On the specificity of healing functions: a study of diagnosis in three faith healing institutions in Feira (Bahia, Brazil).
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.
Ngokwey
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UNICEF, Cotonou, Benin.
D001294:Attitude to Health; D001938:Brazil; D002562:Ceremonial Behavior; D002835:Christianity; D003933:Diagnosis; D004194:Disease / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D007564:Japan / Q000208:ethnology; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D008602:Mental Healing; D013812:Therapeutics