Med Secoli. 1989 ; 1(3): 307-20.

[Disease, tradition and culture]

Ritarossi P.

Dipartimento di Studi Antropologici, UniversitÃ di Roma "La Sapienza".

The observation of the present technological society nullifies thesis of the scientific rationalism, that is the equation between magic, popular or primitive culture and underdevelopment. The pathological experience invests every plane of the cultural pattern, so the different levels of technical knowledge, rationality, symbols and magic imagination are mobilized to give a reason to pain; the illness, in addition to representing an indisposition really existing, has a specific cultural meaning too. In fact every culture, following certain parameters, has built ideologic frames; the concept of illness is connected to the classification of the reality. Biology and culture are inseparable. For this, lately, the gnosiological horizons of the science are becoming larger and less dogmatic. The knowledge (in the medicine, too) is a process in fieri, without absolute and final limits.