Soc Sci Med. 1989 ; 29(4): 515-26.

On the specificity of healing functions: a study of diagnosis in three faith healing institutions in Feira (Bahia, Brazil).

Ngokwey N.

UNICEF, Cotonou, Benin.

This essay examines three popular ethnomedical institutions in Brazil: faith healers, Protestant evangelicals, and the practitioners of one of the Japanese new religions. In particular, I compare the relative degrees of diagnostic specificity in their practices. Medical anthropologists have neglected the analysis of this aspect of practice, although I show in the present paper its utility for comparative work. Also, I show that diagnostic specificity is congruent with an ontological view of illness and an active role for the healer, while lack of diagnostic specificity is congruent with a very general form of therapy, such as is found in the Seicho-no-Ie religion. Traditional rezadores, in contrast, use a high degree of diagnostic specificity.