Ethnomedicine and medical anthropology. A survey of developments in Germany from a viewpoint in 1978

This following article is a reprint of “Ethnomedicine and medical anthropology. A survey of developments in Germany” from “Reviews in Anthropology” 4, 4: 473–485, 1978. Thirty years ago the author analyzed the discourses in Medical Anthropology taking place in German speaking countries. He referred to important initiators of this new interdisciplinary field such as Edmund Husserl and his concept of the lifeworld (Lebenswelt) and Victor von Weizsäcker and his “anthropological medicine”. There have been three main focuses: (a) Ethnographic studies to serve cultural identity (b) Problems of medical care by describing and comparing medical concepts and cognitive systems, especially in settings of conflicts, and medical transfer situation (c) Impulses for a new medical anthropology: historical and transcultural studies of therapeutic patterns, focused on the suffering and health seeking human — the “homo patiens”.