Sorcerers,saints and charlatans: Black folk healers in urban America

Case histories of black Americans who believe their illness has been caused by sorcery have been reported with increasing frequency in the clinical literature. Such individuals often believe that their problems are not amenable to orthodox medical regimens and they may leave treatment to seek out a folk healer. Healers believed to be able to cure sorcery are viewed ambivalently as they are thought able to magically cause illness as well as cure it. There is little information available on such individuals or their modes of treatment, making it difficult to assess their abilities. This article reviews what is known about such individuals, including an attempt to learn more about those who have advertised in a large city newspaper. It is concluded that some of these individuals provide a useful service to their clients but that many others use their reputations as manipulators of occult powers to extract money from the poor and gullible.     

Patients treated by physicians and folk healers: A comparative outcome study in Taiwan

Outcome of 118 patients treated by shamans in Taipei, Taiwan, is compared with that of 112 roughly matched patients treated by physicians. Impressive among the chief findings at time of follow-up evaluation, more than three-fourths of patients in both groups across five distinctive sickness types perceived their health problems as improved and were so evaluated by the research staff. Patient attributions of source of threapeutic efficacy were more complex and ambivalent. Counter to our hypothesis a higher proportion of patients were dissatisfied with shamanistic treatment than with biomedical care, and this held true even for somatization patients with psychiatric problems. The findings are interpreted with respect to serious limitations on research design and methods that pertain to this and, we believe, any other study of indigenous healing. These limitations call into question certain of the findings in particular, and illustrate why assessments of therapeutic outcome, besides reflecting biological constraints, should be recognized as differential cultural construals of socially constructed reality.     

Plants used medicinally by folk healers of the Lahu people from the autonomous county of Jinping Miao,Yao, and Dai in Southwest China

The Kucong, a branch of Lahu and an indigenous ethnic group living in Jinping County, Yunnan Province, China, have a very short history of settled village life (about 40 years). According to the data of ethnobotanical investigation, 118 species of medicinal plants belonging to 57 families and 98 genera used by Lahu healers have been inventoried. The characteristics of medicinal plants coming from a great number of families and genera relate to the traditional life-style of the Lahu. The more common the diseases are, the more abundant the related medicinal knowledge is. The most frequently used parts of medicinal plants are the leaf (35.22%) and root (32.08%). The disappearance of environments related to the traditional life-style of the Lahu threatens the existence of their traditional medicinal knowledge, similar to threats facing many other traditional medicines. Collection and inventory should be essential research fields in studies of traditional medicine.     

From the delta to Detroit: Packaging a folk epic for a new folk

This paper provides a narrative account of the making of the video, Tales from Arab Detroit: Abu Zayd Comes to America. It focuses upon the original project which involved bringing Egyptian epic‐singers to Detroit to perform selections from the epic of the Banî Hilâl tribe and their hero, Abu Zayd, in September 1993. The paper offers a brief background to the epic tradition itself, an analysis of two of the Detroit performances, a critique of the portrayal of the singers found in the final version of the video, and concludes with a textual ethnographer's thoughts about ethnographic filmmaking.     

Antioxidants: Molecules, medicines, and myths

There is an industry-driven public obsession with antioxidants, which are equated to safe, health-giving molecules to be swallowed as mega-dose supplements or in fortified foods. Sometimes they are good for you, but sometimes they may not be, and pro-oxidants can be better for you in some circumstances. This article re-examines and challenges some basic assumptions in the nutritional antioxidant field.     

Thoracic morphology of a flightless mexican grasshopper,Barytettix psolus: Comparison with the locust,Schistocerca gregaria

The thoracic morphology of a flightless grasshopper, Barytettix psolus, is described and compared to that of locusts, Schistocerca gregaria, to evaluate modifications to skeleton, muscles, and the nervous system which have accompanied secondary loss of flight. Barytettix lacks hindwings, has immobile vestiges of forewings and is devoid of skeletal specializations for wing movement and flight. Its pterothoracic musculature resembles that of Schistocerca except for the absence of those muscles which, in locusts, have the primary function of moving the wings, the dorsal longitudinal, tergosternal, first basalar, pleuroalar, and dorsal accessory muscles. Pterothoracic ganglia of Barytettix resemble those of Schistocerca in their gross features, number, and primary branching pattern of nerves, with differences in detail relating to reduction of the flight muscles. The combination of features exhibited in Barytettix represents an extreme reduction in the specialization for wing movements and flight displayed by most acridids, at a level which exceeds that of many brachypterous and some apterous species. While skeletal fusion and loss of muscles indicate loss of flight, the accompanying thoracic stiffening and increase in overall body density may promote more efficient jumping as a means of locomotion.     

Initiation of healers in Ethiopia: a case study

The aim of this study is to see how healers are initiated in Ethiopia. The paper also describes the position of traditional healers in the current situation of Ethiopia. It is found out that most of spiritual healers believed that they are selected by divine power or spirit. The selections are manifested by a single or a combination of ways namely: through dream, escaping mortal accident, and miraculous healing from chronic illnesses. However, secular healers got the initiation through apprenticeship. It is noted that in many cases "spirit selected healers" could also undergo apprenticeship.     

Evolutionary branching of a magic trait

We study the adaptive dynamics of a so-called magic trait, which is under natural selection and which also serves as a cue for assortative mating. We derive general results on the monomorphic evolutionary singularities. Next, we study the long-term evolution of single-locus genetic polymorphisms under various strengths of assortativity in a version of Levene’s soft-selection model, where natural selection favours different values of a continuous trait within two habitats. If adaptive dynamics leads to a polymorphism with sufficiently different alleles, then the corresponding homozygotes cease to interbreed so that sympatric speciation occurs.     

Facts,myths and legends on the prime industrial microorganism

Summary Archaic speculations and firmly established legends regarding the origin of the yeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae and related species are revisited in light of past and recent ecological evidence pointing to a strict association with artificial, man-made environments such as wineries and fermentation plants. The nomenclature within this industrially important group is also discussed in view of the modifications imposed from application of molecular techniques to classification.This paper is dedicated to Professor Herman Jan Phaff in honor of his 50 years of active research which still continues.     

The gonadotropic cells in the adenohypophysis of the blind mexican cave fish,Anoptichthys jordani

Summary The development and activity of the basophils in the meso-adenohypophysis of Anopthichthys jordani were studied in relation to the maturation of the gonads. In addition, pituitaries and ovaries of post-spawning females were studied during a period 0–11 days subsequent to spawning. The large and mainly PAS-positive basophilic cells in the meso-adenohypophysis were the only cell type that showed a correlation with the development and maturation of the ovaries and testes. These cells were subjected to a partial or complete degranulation in females following oviposition, when yolk formation in the ovary was at a maximum. It is concluded that the large PAS-positive basophils in the mesoadenohypophysis have a gonadotropic function and that only one gonadotropic cell type is present in the adenohypophysis of Anoptichthys jordani.This study was partly supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.).I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. P. G. W. J. van Oordt for his active interest and constructive suggestions. Mr. R. van den Hurk and Miss Tjitske van Soelen provided valuable assistence in the course of the experiments. Mr. H. van Kooten made the photographs. Special thanks are due also to Mr. M. J. van Oosterum and Mr. J. Rowaan; without their capable and constant help it would have been hardly possible to obtain such satisfactory spawning results.