title: Diseases in the tropics: a confrontation in an African rural practice.
abstract: Recent claims that "diseases of Western civilization" are rare in rural African communities may not be justified. African peasants have a high pain threshold; many attend traditional healers rather than Western-trained doctors; and their language contains no words to express the descriptive terms used in Western medicine for the symptoms and clinical features of these diseases.
mesh_terms: D000349:Africa; D003142:Communication; D005194:Family Practice; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008519:Medicine, Traditional; D010146:Pain; D012423:Rural Health; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D014330:Tropical Medicine