The subject of medical cultural anthropology is the exploration of how culture impacts medicine, health, and health care. Culture is the total way of life of a people. Anthropology is the scientific study of mankind. Culture involves ethnicity, customs, traditions and religion. The ethnography of a people exhibits daily life and behavior. Culture focuses on behavioral practice and religion and belief system.
The family structure in matriarchal and patriarchal societies is part of culture. Gender identity and sexuality is connected to culture. Marriage practices, ceremonies, customs, rituals and social interaction is associated with culture. The social life and interpersonal relationships including language and cultural norm of western civilization. The food different ethnic group eat, the way people dress, and how members of a ethnic group interact reflects their cultural background.
Holistic healing and alternative medicine has a cultural connection to ancient traditions. Some enclaves of believers have very little trust in modern medicine. Instead, some cultures prefer to believe in remedies, mystics, medicine men, and mysterious supernatural cures. Some ethnic groups from various demographics believe traditional herbs and cures derided from nature.
The story depicts a family that believes in ancient ancestral traditional medicine that has been passed down in their family for generations. The family portrayed in the story strongly rejects and repudiates interference from the outside world at rely on ancient healing instead of modern synthetic or artificial chemicals.
This is the fictionalized ethnography of a family that practices ancient medicine. An ethnography chronicles the social and cultural daily activities of the family of healers. The family is in the relentlessly pursuit of a cure for a mysterious illness.
The family portrayed in this story is dedicated to finding a cure for the illness using ancient traditional medicine derived from plants. The ancient plants extracts are scientifically combined to make various cures. The formulas for the healing elixir are veiled in secrecy. The miracle medicine and covert cures are surreptitiously obtained over generations. Under the cover of darkness in hidden rooms cloak-and-dagger meetings are conducted to find cure.
Some illnesses are affliction of the physical body. However, some sicknesses are perhaps a figment of the imagination. The symptoms are made worse when emotion, cultural practices and rituals are observed. An illness with exacerbated symptoms can seem more deadly when psychosomatic patient uses strong emotional belief systems. Sometimes a placebo sugar pill (that is not a real medication) can be used to sooth the soul of the patient. A mind, body, and soul connection can be made the traditional ritual and religion to heal a worried patient.
Faith healers believe in the laying on of hands as exhibited in the Bible. Jesus spoke of healing the sick and making the blind see. One of the many forms of the holy spirit was exemplified when the sick were healed. In the New Testament, the true believers obtained the gift of healing through the spirit and their faith.
Music combined with faith can touch the soul. Some religious ethnic groups believe music has the evocative power to heal. This narrative intertwines strong factors combing folklore, legacy, linage, ancestry, genealogy over many generations of a matriarchal family structure with female dominate figure.
