The most important insight this book depicts is that culture is a major influence on how people view health treatments. For the Hmongs, they viewed many of the Western treatments as being against their culture. For them "most believe that the body contains a finite amount of blood that it is unable to replenish, so repeated blood sampling, especially from small children, may be fatal”(Fadiman 33). The book also illustrates that medicine sometimes is not the only to cure a person. For example, when May broke her arm and was told by the ER doctors that she needed a cast her mother refused and May fully recovered by bathing her arm in herbs and wrapping it in a poultice for a week. For public health professionals to be successful there should be a happy medium between the cultural practices of the individual’s culture and the medical practices of
The most important insight this book depicts is that culture is a major influence on how people view health treatments. For the Hmongs, they viewed many of the Western treatments as being against their culture. For them "most believe that the body contains a finite amount of blood that it is unable to replenish, so repeated blood sampling, especially from small children, may be fatal”(Fadiman 33). The book also illustrates that medicine sometimes is not the only to cure a person. For example, when May broke her arm and was told by the ER doctors that she needed a cast her mother refused and May fully recovered by bathing her arm in herbs and wrapping it in a poultice for a week. For public health professionals to be successful there should be a happy medium between the cultural practices of the individual’s culture and the medical practices of