Kuru Sorcery: Disease and Danger in the New Guinea Highlands

by Shirley Lindenbaum

Book Overview

Kuru, a fatal neurological disease thought to be transmitted through cannibalism, is examined in the Fore, a New Guinea people afflicted with the disease, who believe it to be caused by sorcery. The author also discusses Fore beliefs about diagnosis and prevention of other diseases.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0874843626
• ISBN13: 9780874843620
• Release Date: October 1978
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Langua
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Ethnography, but Needing an Update

I have used *Kuru Sorcery* for several university courses. It's a great book for its time (1978), but so much has been learned about *kuru* (a spongiform encephalopathy related to Mad Cow Disease) since this book was published. Anyone who reads or uses this book (which is a first-rate ethnography, as far as it goes) must add his or her own "appendix" or "final chapter." I recommend this book, with the understanding that the prospective reader will need to complete the amazing picture that Lindenbaum painted as best she could at the time of her writing it.

This is by the woman that SOLVED an epidemic!

Shirley Lindenbaum is the anthropologist who discovered the key to kuru. And this book is a marvelous, brief, readable introduction to medical anthropology. I use it every single semester for every class I teach.