Decolonising Knowledge: Biomedical Beliefs and Indigenous Medical Practice

Critical discussions about medicine and medical practices are cognoscente of the evolution of such practices and the historical and cross-cultural developments of healthcare systems, or arenas. in a seminal text, Charles Leslie outlined some of the key examples in terms of comparative (Asian) healthcare systems. This sets the scene for future generations of researchers to apply a more comparative understanding, not just to Asian medical systems but to any such cross-cultural analysis of medicine and health care. The text also brings into sharp relief the relative merits and potential drawbacks of applying a unified homogenized overarching approach to medical practice. This chapter therefore concerns itself with the idea of healthcare systems rather than any notion of a single universally agreed medical practice and the meaning this has for “modern medicine” in the contemporary world in the (post) industrial West and in the so-called developing societies.