Soc Sci Med. 1994 Jan; 38(2): 383-93.

Hot and cold in transformation: is Iban medicine humoral?

Barrett RJ, Lucas RH.

Department of Psychiatry, University of Adelaide, Australia.

Iban categories of hot and cold are examined in the context of humoral medical systems in southeast Asia. These categories are more than binary and oppositional: they are also contradictory and can only be understood in terms of their capacity for transformation in 'depth'. Analysis of the Iban epistemology of temperature sensation reveals the limitations of reductionist empirical approaches to hot and cold. Illness is apprehended, at one level, in terms of unusual conjunctions of opposite temperatures which signify a deeper disturbance in the relationship between body and soul, humans and spirits. Iban therapy redefines and relocates these categories in their proper place and at their appropriate level. It progresses from hot lay treatments to cool ritual treatments, yet cannot be accounted for within a limited framework of homeostatic balance. This paper develops an ethnographically grounded definition of humoralism which emphasizes non-reductive logic, cultural practice and transformation. The key element, transformation, is defined as a transition between categories and a shift in the level of interpretation which fundamentally alter the Iban experience of body and illness.