IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v34y1992i3p307-315.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Medicines and culture--A double perspective on drug utilization in a developing country

Author

Listed:
  • Sachs, Lisbeth
  • Tomson, Göran

Abstract

A double perspective, one medical-pharmacological and one social-anthropological, is used to understand the logic of drug utilization among practitioners and outpatients at a health unit in Sri Lanka. Both negative and positive aspects of local prescribing practices are highlighted. Western pharmaceuticals are integrated into therapeutic choices for outpatients in Sri Lanks by means of the Ayurvedic theory of balance and practitioners' and patients' behaviour in consultations results in their expectations being met, even if they do not use the same set of health ideas and interpretations of health intervention. The healing power ascribed to Western pharmaceuticals is described and their possible risks discussed from both a biomedical and an anthropological point of view.

Suggested Citation

  • Sachs, Lisbeth & Tomson, Göran, 1992. "Medicines and culture--A double perspective on drug utilization in a developing country," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 307-315, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:34:y:1992:i:3:p:307-315
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(92)90272-R
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hemachandra, Nilmini N. & Rajapaksa, Lalini C. & Manderson, Lenore, 2009. "A "usual occurrence:" Stress incontinence among reproductive aged women in Sri Lanka," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1395-1401, November.
    2. Kotwal, Atul, 2005. "Innovation, diffusion and safety of a medical technology: a review of the literature on injection practices," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 60(5), pages 1133-1147, March.
    3. Sato, Azusa, 2012. "Does socio-economic status explain use of modern and traditional health care services?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(8), pages 1450-1459.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:34:y:1992:i:3:p:307-315. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.