ABSTRACT
The folk-illness of susto has long captured the interest of anthropologists. A review of the literature reveals a multitude of competing ideas as to its biological basis, its epidemiological patterning, and why it persists as it does. The present essay offers not only a summation of much of the research done on fright-sickness to date, but also suggests a number of new lines of inquiry that, when completed, will advance our understanding of this widely spread, yet still to be fully understood, ethnomedical disease category.
Subject(s)
Cross-Cultural Comparison , Hispanic or Latino/psychology , Life Change Events , Magic , Medicine, Traditional , Mental Disorders/psychology , Psychophysiologic Disorders/psychology , Central America/ethnology , Humans , Mental Disorders/diagnosis , Psychophysiologic Disorders/diagnosis , Risk Factors , United StatesABSTRACT
This paper introduces a combined set of anthropological and biological research techniques that allow a single researcher to conduct a field-based screen of ethnopharmaceutical resources, even under difficult field conditions. The results of one such screen, presented here, indicate that the most commonly used remedies in an ethnomedical system are also those most likely to contain active constituents. Several pragmatic and theoretical considerations deriving from these results are discussed.
Subject(s)
Biological Assay/methods , Drug Evaluation, Preclinical/methods , Medicine, Traditional , Animals , Decapoda/drug effects , Plant Extracts/pharmacologyABSTRACT
George Foster's model of 'personalistic' and 'naturalistic' disease theories is employed in the present analysis of fright-sickness among Cakchiquel villagers in highland Guatemala. Field data from Panajachel and San Antonio Aguas Calientes suggest that pronounced intrasocietal competition favors personalistic interpretation, with sorcery cited as the ultimate source, rather than naturalistic interpretation, which emphasizes chance or destiny. Village differences in subsistence echology and internal competition apparently underlie variations in both the social function and assumed etiology of fright-sickness.
