Xishuangbanna Keno Social Disease Classification System Treatment "dream Doctor" Oracle

Medical anthropology has been concerned with, among other things, ways in which different cultures define and deal with illness, the cultural system in which patients have been living with, and with the underlying metaphor of illness. Traditional Jinuo society of Xishuangbanna has its own set of medical and cultural systems, which feature a unique illness classification and corresponding treatments. For people of the Jinuo ethnic minority, individuals would fall ill due to the loss of their soul, leading to psychological anxiety or illness that makes one neither dead nor alive. Illness may also be caused by external emergencies, which can be further divided into illness of the family, and illness of the village. The third category of illness refers to deadly diseases which cannot be classified in the modern Jinuo medical system. Political and economic changes have tremendous impact upon the Jinuo social culture. The modern medical system has been gradually changing the Jinuo medical order. Although modern health care system has been predominant in minority areas, there has existed in Zhalv village of the Jinuo Hill, Xishuangbanna the basic health care treatment of "soul retrieval", and the oracle treatment of the "Dream Doctor". The reason for the active practice of these Jinuo traditional healing techniques can be best analyzed from the perspective of medical anthropology. According to the Jinuo cosmology, which is based upon animistic beliefs and the world of ghosts, illness ensues when the soul is not in its proper position. While globalization and its far-reaching impact upon the Jinuo society has made it increasingly difficult for the Jinuo people to classify their own illness system, modern health care system hard to cope with "incurable diseases". It is against this background that oracle treatment of "Dream Doctor" has arisen and thrived. The oracle treatment of "Dream Doctor" heals not only the body of the Jinuo people, but also cultural disorder. This paper discusses the modern illness classification of the Jinuo society and its corresponding treatments. It focuses on analysis of the oracle treatment of "Dream Doctor," whose healing techniques deal with social and cultural disorder. It argues that with the dominance of modern health care system, the survival and thriving of traditional healing techniques represent the specific demands of the disordered Jinuo culture, which hard be healed by the health care system established in the context of modernity.