英文摘要
|
Western medicine, Chinese medicine and folk religious healing are the three common medical systems in contemporary Taiwan. Describing the treatments of illness and the healing practices of these three systems from my own experience and observation, this paper explores how each system respectively conceptualizes illness. Firstly, due to the development of modern science and technology, the Western medical system is able to break the human body into fundamental units, and pinpoint where the health problem lies. Doctors perform clinical operations on human flesh and prescribe medicinal treatment to cure diseases. People get sick when the fundamental unit malfunctions. Secondly, the traditional Chinese medical system perceives the body as a natural system consisting of five essential elements-metal, wood, water, fire, and earth. Each element corresponds to an organ, and health conditions are reflective of the relationships among these elements. Thus, in the Chinese medical system illness is caused by or indicative of imbalanced conditions. Achieving balance between the inner body and outer environment is a vital prerequisite for curing patients. Thirdly, the folk religious system sees humans as situated in a tangled web of relationships with both other people and unknown existences. People can get sick because they have unfinished business or relationships with unknown existences. Therefore the folk religious healer assists the patient/sufferer to create a gnostic approach guided by faith and practiced in the material domain in order to complete such business or fix relationships. When patients/sufferers carry out the required religious practice, they feel they make compensation to unknown existences and also gain a feeling of recovery within themselves.
|