Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a theoretical and an empirical study of biomedical practice in Mexico and patients' responses to it. It explores three interrelated theoretical issues: the ways in which a system of knowledge developed in one society translates in another; the ways in which patients respond to biomedical treatment received in a public hospital; and the nature of sickness and recovery requisites that illuminate patients' differential responses to treatment. The book is concerned with the anthropology of sickness: the various individual, social, and cultural factors that are linked with an episodic disorder and its resolution. It describes the cultural landscape of Mexico City to situate the patients and their lives in context. The book analyses Mexican cultural etiological understandings and cultural conceptions of symptomatologies that are relevant to the understanding of biomedical practices.