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"Medicine Across Cultures: History and Practice of Medicine in Non-Western Cultures consists of 19 essays dealing with the medical knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Egyptian, and Tibetan medicine, the book includes essays on comparing Chinese and western medicine and religion and medicine. The essays address the connections between medicine and culture and relate the medical practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay is well illustrated and contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both the history of medicine and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups."--Jacket.
To Tibetans life does not begin at birth, but rather at conception. After death, a being’s consciousness… wanders in an intermediate realm until impelled by the forces of its own karma to enter a womb at the instant of conception. Gestation is a hazardous time when women try to consume foods and seek spiritual means to prevent any harm coming to their growing baby. Once born, the child must fight for survival against daunting odds. Infancy is fraught with more hazards than any other stage of the life course, and the infant mortality rate in Nubri is frightfully high. Nearly one in every four children born alive does not live to see his or her first birthday. (Childs 2004: 38)