There is no single, natural body. Every society teaches its members what a body is made of, where it ends, and what can go wrong inside it — and those answers decide what counts as illness. Tap six body models, then view one body at three scales.
Pick a body model
Six societies, six bodies. Choose one on the right to begin.
tap the marked spots on the diagram for detail
How many bodies are there?tap a model to begin
Illness is—
Healing means—
Before you startMedical anthropology treats biomedicine as one system among many, not as the referee that grades the others. Each model below explains, predicts and treats — and each is used by people alive today.
Emic & etic: an emic account explains a body model in the terms its own users would recognise; an etic account compares models from outside. Franz Boas asked us to do the emic work first — including for our own medicine.
Common error: calling these “beliefs” layered over a real, universal body. Present tense matters too — Ayurveda, East Asian medicine, Unani and Diné ceremony are living, practised systems, not survivals.