The need to train uncertified rural practitioners in India.

Uncertified rural practitioners (URPs) without formal medical qualification occupy an indispensable yet dangerous position in the rural health care system in India. The low cost, close proximity, and higher health hazards in rural areas along with the inability of established health-care setups to fulfill existing demands have favored the flourishing trade of URPs. Irrational and dangerous drug prescriptions, unauthorized interventions, improper waste disposal, and several cases of malpractice by URPs are serious threats to the exposed population. However, because of the practical compulsion and real-world necessity of their existence, URPs should be scientifically trained and sensitized to regulate, qualify, and integrate them as a part of the existing health care system in India.

Mohit's Pharmakon: Symptom, Rotational Bodies, and Pharmaceuticals in Rural Rajasthan.

This article reexamines medical anthropology theories of symptom, illness, and disease to consider unregulated medical care in India. It builds on clinical observations, an inventory of the pharmaceuticals used by men who call themselves "Bengali doctors," and their patients to understand medical care in a context that privileges symptom not disease. It draws on Derrida's use of pharmakon to outline the complexities of care and embodiment and helps locate local and medical anthropology theories of symptom and pharmaceuticals within theories of the experiential body. It asks two key questions: What is medical care without disease and what are its implications on a local biology in which disease-based biomedicine is modified? Searching for a tentative answer, it works to bring medical anthropology's interest in symptom back to the body without losing symptoms' connection to political economies, individual experience, and localized biomedicine.