Medicine and Culture

Medicine and culture continually and consistently shape our values, traditions. Two
inseparable entities, they make up a complex world, or, set of worlds.

Medicine as a culture has its own institutions, and sub-institutions, with rites of passage,
forms of education, standards of behaviour and sets of “norms” that have their own
unique history, development and semi-autonomous life. At same time, medicine exists as
an integral and indispensable part of larger social cultures, e.g culture of science,
religious and ethical beliefs and of our continually changing and evolving society and
civilization. Because medicine and culture influence our daily lives and our ultimate
destines and fates, they must be considered together as well as individually both as they
influence us in terms of our personal habits and conduct, beliefs and as they function
themselves through specialized behaviours and institutions.

Since Greco-Roman times medicine has been a vital source of authority in Western
societies. It has affected our most basic habits as well as our elemental attitudes toward
our bodies, the way life should be lived and the meaning of death. As the diverse shifts in
society evolved, from the decline of magic to occupation with hygiene and cleanliness, or
the novel appreciation of the unconscious or psyche, medicine has demonstrated an
extraordinary ability to intervene in and to shape culture. Over time, it acquired the power
to mark the difference between normal and abnormal, between genders and between life
and death. It affects what people will/will not eat or drink, touch or embrace. It separates
the clean from the dirty, the wholesome from the noxious.

Medicine At the Dawn of Civilization

Religion dominated by offering its own answers to how man should live, what he should
do. Influence shifted from medicine to culture and back again. Examples: Jewish dietary
code laws, morality: Ten Commandments, War: Survival of the fittest, importance of
blood. What man could not explain he acquainted with religion. Before the age of
Monotheism, when Polytheism was the form of worship, man believed that his role was
to please the Gods in order to live in peace and harmony. Pleasing the Gods meant not
being offensive in any way. The classical era saw the rise of the God, Zeus, who bore the
body of a man and had a large family of sons and daughters who assumed roles and
responsibilities that were both physical and moral. For example in the pantheon of Gods,
Zeus’ son Apollo was a physician, his daughter Panacea was the Goddess of pain relief
while another daughter Hygeia was the Goddess of cleanliness. If Zeus were angry with
man he would show his disdain and his desire for revenge by punishing the human(s) by
sending thunderbolts or lightning that would often cause disease. The concept of
contagion and germs was unknown so it was presumed that if man did something
offensive to Zeus, then he had offended the whole family of Gods. Hence, part of his
punishment was to have his whole family punished with him by sending them the same
disease. Western tradition regarded the human form as sacred therefore it was the sacred
duty of every man to keep his body holy in the same way that a temple was holy. He must
not dishonour Zeus by doing anything to his body. In that way the concept of surgery was
outlawed and the idea of purification was of primary importance. No one could worship
or honour Zeus unless his body was clean and ritually cleansed. This tradition was later
passed on to the Jewish and then to the Christian traditions that generally regarded the
body as sacred, not only created by, but belonging to God. Because the body belonged to
God, it had to be returned to God at the conclusion of life. Therefore the body had to go
whole back to its Maker. In the Hebrew Bible God seals his Covenant with man by
demanding circumcision of every male as the symbol of his covenant. Plato and
Hippocrates believed in the Naturalistic orientation that is they saw balance as primary in
maintaining physical and mental health. The body was an integrated complex that was
dependent upon the correct amount of fluids, heat, nourishment and moisture. This came
to be known as The Theory of the Four Humours and was one of the major
accomplishments of Hippocratic physicians.