ABSTRACT
As various contributions in this volume demonstrate, pluralism is a characteristic of medical practices in most societies, in India as well as in Southern Africa, in the USA and in New Zealand. Frequently, plurality in medicine is accompanied by the development of stereotypical images of the competing practitioners and groups, or medical traditions. These images are part of the public discourse, and may also be constitutive for the self-image of practitioners and their clientele. Yet little is known about how such images of ‘other’ medicine emerge. On what conceptual resources do the relevant descriptions draw? From where do they take their points of reference, their metaphors and their terminology? This chapter intends to investigate these questions with regard to the German encounter with the medical traditions of East Africa.
