Varieties of Reasoning in Medical Anthropology

Comments on Cheryl Mattingly's, Linda M. Hunt's, & Linda C. Garro's (all, 1998) articles exploring various forms of reasoning used by sick people & those around them to understand a disorder & take action to ease its effects. Garro's studies of medical decision making is praised for showing how this reasoning is dynamic & expressed in multiple explanatory frameworks. Mattingly's analysis of competing systems of clinical reasoning is discussed. The accuracy of Mattingly's & Hunt's comparisons between biomedicine & ethnomedicine & the nature of their explanations is questioned. Implications of Hunt's work for the practice of clinical medicine are assessed. The articles are seen as consistent with the view of society & culture as constructed from a dynamic set of practices. It is concluded that all three authors demonstrate that using textbook biomedical rationality as a standard for forms of medical thought cannot be supported. 3 References. T. Arnold