Traditional medicine versus official medicine: abetment or empowerment?

Abstract

Health and its conservation are topics that have concerned people since the beginning of times. We are immersed in a society of well-being, where feeling bad is not tolerated. For this reason, quick remedies of all types are searched for. At the moment, the coexistence between traditional medicine and the scientific or official one is evident. Each one is used according to necessity, beliefs or personal convenience. However, besides this coexistence, a certain relationship of power exists: between the medical class and patients. With this study, we seek to demonstrate that coexistence and to evaluate how concepts of health have developed in a small population of people aged between 65 and 85 years, born in a rural surrounding, who at the moment reside in the urban area of Ferrol. In this way, we have verified that, at the moment, they resort to both types of medicine, depending on the seriousness of the problem, trust or personal convenience, thus both medicines in the study population coexist; data for this have been gathered in an ethnographic study.

Keywords

• Medicina tradicional
• Antropología
• Concepto de salud