ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in this book. In anthropology there has been a tendency to reify a distinction between applied and critical anthropology, particularly in anthropology's relationship with development, and one that has been applied to anthropology's relationship to anthropology's relationship. The social relations through which therapeutic efficacy and the power to heal are understood, as witnessed by the stories dancing through Palpa of the power of healers, are neither straightforward, nor static, but mediated by this specific socio-political milieu. The management of tuberculosis involves the complex process of providing a combination of antibiotics, for at least six months, for treating a condition that prior to the availability of medication was frequently fatal. When pharmaceuticals are ingested by the ill, as they are in increasing amounts, be that for TB, or mental health, they have effects on the symptoms.
