The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
I recently read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures by Anne Fadiman.
It was interesting on many, many levels and I would encourage anyone who is interested in the Hmong, Western Medicine, communication, language, ethics, etc. to give it a shot.
Here are three passages I want to remember:
"In the Hmong language, there are hundreds of lyrical two-word expressions--not the stuff of poetry but of everyday speech--that onomatopoeically describe various sounds. These alliterative expressions, collected by the linguist Martha Ratcliff, give some inkling of the intimate relationship the Hmong of Laos had with the natural world. Some samples: zuj ziag*, a cicada singing; lis loos, bees buzzing; nplhuj nplhoos, a boar grunting; mig mog, tigers playing; ig awg, wild pigs fighting in close combat; txij txej, a rat or mouse crying out in a snake's mouth; xuj xuav, a snake undulating; txiv txev, birds chirping; rhuj rhuav, birds shuffling through leaves looking for insects; plig plawg, a bird rising from its nest on the ground; zig zuag, monkeys swishing through the treetops with a continuous noise; tsig tsuag, monkeys leaping through the treetops with separate noises; nrhuj nreev, a tree popping fast before it falls; nrhuj nrhawv, a tree popping slowly before it falls; vig vag, a tree brushing through other trees and underbrush while it falls; nqaj nqug, many trees falling one right after another; pij pauj, fruit falling on the ground; pliv ploov, fruit falling in water; xuj xuav, a long, easy all-day rain."
"...a set of eight questions, designed to elicit a patient's "explanatory model," which were developed by Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist who chairs the department of social medicine at Harvard Medical School...:
1. What do you call the problem?...
2. What do you think has caused the problem?...
3. Why do you think it started when it did?...
4. What do you think the sickness does? How does it work?...
5. How severe is the sickness? Will it have a short or long course?...
6. What kind of treatment do you think the patient should receive? What are the most important results you hope [the patient] receives from this treatment?...
7. What are the chief problems the sickness has caused?...
8. What do you fear most about the sickness?..."
"After fourteen months, the grant for the program expired, and, as far as I know, that was the first and last penile exorcism to be sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services."
"...a page from the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was exerted from an article called "Doctors Have Feelings Too." Its author, a Harvard Medical School instructor named William M. Zinn, posited that because doctors may be busy "doing multiple other tasks," "maintaining a clinical distance," or harboring guilt about negative reactions to their patients, they run the risk of overlooking their feelings. So, if you're a doctor, how can you recognize that you're having a feeling? Some tips from Dr. Zinn:
Most emotions have physical counterparts. Anxiety may be associated with a tightness of the abdomen or excessive diaphoresis; anger may be manifested by a generalized muscle tightness or a clenching of the jaw; sexual arousal may be noted by a tingling of the loins or piloerection; and sadness may be felt by conjunctival injection or a heaviness of the chest.
....if any of my Hmong friends heard that American doctors had to read an article in order to learn how to tell if they were angry, they would never, ever return to [the hospital]."
The Hmong in this book is rendered in a system called RPA which, among other idiosyncrasies, uses the final consonant to indicate which of Hmong's six tones are used.
It was interesting on many, many levels and I would encourage anyone who is interested in the Hmong, Western Medicine, communication, language, ethics, etc. to give it a shot.
Here are three passages I want to remember:
"In the Hmong language, there are hundreds of lyrical two-word expressions--not the stuff of poetry but of everyday speech--that onomatopoeically describe various sounds. These alliterative expressions, collected by the linguist Martha Ratcliff, give some inkling of the intimate relationship the Hmong of Laos had with the natural world. Some samples: zuj ziag*, a cicada singing; lis loos, bees buzzing; nplhuj nplhoos, a boar grunting; mig mog, tigers playing; ig awg, wild pigs fighting in close combat; txij txej, a rat or mouse crying out in a snake's mouth; xuj xuav, a snake undulating; txiv txev, birds chirping; rhuj rhuav, birds shuffling through leaves looking for insects; plig plawg, a bird rising from its nest on the ground; zig zuag, monkeys swishing through the treetops with a continuous noise; tsig tsuag, monkeys leaping through the treetops with separate noises; nrhuj nreev, a tree popping fast before it falls; nrhuj nrhawv, a tree popping slowly before it falls; vig vag, a tree brushing through other trees and underbrush while it falls; nqaj nqug, many trees falling one right after another; pij pauj, fruit falling on the ground; pliv ploov, fruit falling in water; xuj xuav, a long, easy all-day rain."
"...a set of eight questions, designed to elicit a patient's "explanatory model," which were developed by Arthur Kleinman, a psychiatrist and medical anthropologist who chairs the department of social medicine at Harvard Medical School...:
1. What do you call the problem?...
2. What do you think has caused the problem?...
3. Why do you think it started when it did?...
4. What do you think the sickness does? How does it work?...
5. How severe is the sickness? Will it have a short or long course?...
6. What kind of treatment do you think the patient should receive? What are the most important results you hope [the patient] receives from this treatment?...
7. What are the chief problems the sickness has caused?...
8. What do you fear most about the sickness?..."
"After fourteen months, the grant for the program expired, and, as far as I know, that was the first and last penile exorcism to be sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services."
"...a page from the Journal of the American Medical Association. It was exerted from an article called "Doctors Have Feelings Too." Its author, a Harvard Medical School instructor named William M. Zinn, posited that because doctors may be busy "doing multiple other tasks," "maintaining a clinical distance," or harboring guilt about negative reactions to their patients, they run the risk of overlooking their feelings. So, if you're a doctor, how can you recognize that you're having a feeling? Some tips from Dr. Zinn:
Most emotions have physical counterparts. Anxiety may be associated with a tightness of the abdomen or excessive diaphoresis; anger may be manifested by a generalized muscle tightness or a clenching of the jaw; sexual arousal may be noted by a tingling of the loins or piloerection; and sadness may be felt by conjunctival injection or a heaviness of the chest.
....if any of my Hmong friends heard that American doctors had to read an article in order to learn how to tell if they were angry, they would never, ever return to [the hospital]."
The Hmong in this book is rendered in a system called RPA which, among other idiosyncrasies, uses the final consonant to indicate which of Hmong's six tones are used.