The Anthropology of Medicine: From Culture to Method Third Edition » (3rd Edition)

LOLA ROMANUCCI-ROSS is Professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

DANIEL E. MOERMAN is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.

LAURENCE R. TANCREDI is clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University.

Originally cited as "must reading" in American Anthropologist, this new third edition of the classic text contains new and updated materials. It is both a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly growing field of medical anthropology and a state-of-the-art reference work on Western and non-Western medicine.

Basil Rudusky

The third edition of this book provides the reader with a transcultural trip through the art and science of healing, with updated chapters on research and method as applied to medical anthropology. Its presumptive purpose is the fusion of cultural and Western medicine for the purpose of conceptual analysis in order to integrate biology and the behavioral sciences into a "biohuman science." The editors feel that this can be achieved by the blending or unification of biomedicine and medical anthropology. Although suitable for a very broad readership, the book will have its greatest appeal to a limited number of physicians and researchers in specific fields of medicine, certain public health professionals, anthropologists, social-psychologists, and various levels of students of these professions. This simply constructed book provides readers with a wealth of references. The limited number of tables and graphs are concise and well done. The charts and tables on the zoonoses, the relationship between animal and human viral diseases, nutrition, and herbal medicine are exceptional and unlikely to be found in such concerted fashion elsewhere. This book supplies the reader with an interesting and fascinating exposition into the importance of numerous cultural influences upon the development of medicine and medical care. It provides good reflective thought on the interaction between physician and patient and implies a passionate need for future discourse and study of the "anthropology of medicine," itself somewhat of a metaphor.