Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards

Throughout history, native peoples around the world have looked for ways to prevent and treat illness. This book illustrates such traditions through a selection of colonial postcards from the early 20th century. These cards are a rich source of visual information about native health and healing, which has been largely overlooked. The book also investigates the meanings of these images for those who produced and collected them. It makes clear that colonial postcards reveal as much about the collectors as it does about the subjects. It also cautions that pictorial postcards may be less truthful than they seem to be, because photographers and publishers regularly interfered with their mise-en-scene, production and descriptions. The book accompanies an exhibition in the Tropenmuseum.

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Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards

Throughout history, native peoples around the world have looked for ways to prevent and treat illness. This book illustrates such traditions through a selection of colonial postcards from the early 20th century. These cards are a rich source of visual information about native health and healing, which has been largely overlooked. The book also investigates the meanings of these images for those who produced and collected them. It makes clear that colonial postcards reveal as much about the collectors as it does about the subjects. It also cautions that pictorial postcards may be less truthful than they seem to be, because photographers and publishers regularly interfered with their mise-en-scene, production and descriptions. The book accompanies an exhibition in the Tropenmuseum.

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Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards

Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards

by Peter de Smet
Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards

Different Truths: Ethnomedicine in Early Postcards

by Peter de Smet

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Overview

Throughout history, native peoples around the world have looked for ways to prevent and treat illness. This book illustrates such traditions through a selection of colonial postcards from the early 20th century. These cards are a rich source of visual information about native health and healing, which has been largely overlooked. The book also investigates the meanings of these images for those who produced and collected them. It makes clear that colonial postcards reveal as much about the collectors as it does about the subjects. It also cautions that pictorial postcards may be less truthful than they seem to be, because photographers and publishers regularly interfered with their mise-en-scene, production and descriptions. The book accompanies an exhibition in the Tropenmuseum.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9789460220173
Publisher: KIT (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen)
Publication date: 03/28/2010
Pages: 220
Product dimensions: 11.87(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Peter de Smet is a senior Dutch clinical pharmacologist, who works as research leader at the Scientific Institute Dutch Pharmacists (The Hague) and is a professor in the Quality of Pharmaceutical Care at the Academic Medical Centre of the Radboud University (Nijmegen).

Table of Contents

Part 1. Prelude
1) Ethnomedicine
2) Mode of Collecting
3) Preceding Books
4) Different Truths
5) Reading Guide
Part 2. Postcards
1) Golden Era
2) Different Meanings
3) Photographers, Publishers and Sponsors
4) Depicted Subjects
5) Senders and Early Collectors
6) Exhibition Postcards
7) Native Descendents
8) Present Buyers
9) Researchers and Curators
10) Documentary Value
11) Caveats
Part 3. Practitioners and Practices
1) Different Perspectives
2) Native Concepts of Illness
3) Self Care
4) Healers Around the World
5) Diagnostic Methods
6) Native Therapies
7) Supernatural Methods of Treatment
8) Material Holders of Power
9) Natural Methods of Treatment
10) Physical Methods
11) Herbal Medicine
12) Surgery
13) Midwifery
14) Animal Care
Part 4. Professionalized Systems
1) Different Health Care Sectors
2) South Asian Traditions
3) East Asian Traditions
4) Western Traditions
5) Colonial Medicine
6) Colonial Public Health Care
7) Missionary Health Care
8) Famine and Pestilence
9) Conspicuous Symptoms
Part 5. Postscript
1) Final Thoughts About Colonial Postcards
2) Final Thoughts About Ethnomedicine

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