Patterns of Continuity and Change

Abstract

How do people with their own medical traditions respond to new theories of disease causation and to novel treatments? Answers to this question are central to the study of innovation and change. The analysis of this issue also has practical relevance to those trying to influence the high levels of illness and death which characterize many of the countries where traditional approaches to illness still prevail. Medical pluralism, the coexistence of differing medical traditions, is now the common pattern in all but the most isolated areas of the world. In Papua New Guinea there are now few, if any, populations that still rely exclusively upon their traditional treatments. Despite this trend the importance of Western medicine in societies such as those in Papua New Guinea is reflected in the anthropological record only to the most limited extent. We therefore felt that a volume bringing together accounts of responses to illness in a wide range of Papua New Guinean societies would be important in correcting this imbalance (Fig. 1).