Illness

Medical anthropology is the study of health and the understanding of health across all cultures. There are many different ways that health is understood world wide and medical anthropologist uses the four areas of study of anthropology to help them understand the different explanations of health. Medical anthropologist looked at health through four different theoretical frameworks; medical ecological, ethnomedical, applied, (McElroy 1996) and critical. Medical ecological looked at the biocultural of an individual and explain how the evolutionary adaptations affect the understanding of health. The ethnomedical theoretical framework looked at how culture is use to explain health and their understanding of the origin of health. Apply medical anthropology used the anthropological training with people and theories to so real life problems. Lastly, critical medical anthropology looked at how the social communities had effect on health. With the broad explanation of the field of Medical Anthropology, this paper will use some of the material that was covered in class to link it with the information from the interviews with the staff at the Student Health Clinic at the University of Northern Colorado to address the following a brief site description and answer how the staffs at the clinic define illnesses, the home remedies that they use, where they learn it from, and their willingness to try different home remedies.

The Student Health Clinic of the University of Northern Colorado is located at 1901 10th Avenue in Cassidy Hall, Greeley Colorado, 80631. When I entered the building there was a hallway that leads me straight to the registration desk. The flooring of the room was appeared to be carpeted with a gray color. To the left of the...

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...g, from a family member, or asked to use by a family member.

One of the things that all of the staffs had in common was their willingness to try home remedies. They all said that they were willing to try the home remedies themselves after they had done the research. They believed that the home remedies did work in a strange ways and maybe it is just a placebo effect that it works. With some background information to confirm that it does not do any harm to them, they were willing to try it. Since they are from a medical profession, there were some concerns that they might have with home remedies and that was why they would like to do some research before they try it out. Also, another concern was that some of the home remedies might have interactions with the medicine that they were taken. So the staff would like to make sure that all is safe before they try them.