ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the history of medical anthropology and explores its present dominion, providing just enough background to fully prepare medical anthropology novices for the methodological work to come. It includes a concise examination of some of the subdiscipline's rudimentary concepts as well as of the links between medical anthropology and health care improvement. Diagnostic activity focuses on discovering what brought the now ill individual to the pathogenic agent's attention, provoking the attack to begin with. Of course, classifying systems is not the ultimate goal of medical anthropology. Medical anthropology frequently is associated only with work done "over there" or with international health. The data collected by anthropologists in earlier times for non-medical purposes were invaluable; anthropologists helped ensure that social and cultural aspects of health and healing were taken into account in ways that promoted health program success. Anthropologists generally consider health as a broad construct, consisting of physical, psychological, and social well-being, including role functionality.
