Images and interpretations of severe illness

ethnological aspects of dealing with cancer

Jutta Dornheim

pp. 157-173

in: Beatrix Pfleiderer, Gilles Bibeau (eds), Anthropologies of medicine, Wiesbaden, Vieweg+Teubner, 1991

Abstract

About the time I was conducting the present study, the Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg began receiving an interesting series of letters. In these letters (received from 1977 to 1979) people from every social class aired their views about the cause and cure of cancer. No one had solicited the correspondents' opinions; they had written on their own initiative. Among the causes of cancer mentioned were infection from the clothes of cancer sufferers as well as from 'sexual intercourse", 'sleeping around" and "licentiousness". One writer thought that the pathogen orbits within the atom of a cancer cell; another that it lies in the nucleus of a negatively-charged entity consisting of gas or cancer salmonellae. Therapeutic proposals extended from dietary measures, such as fasting or the intake of fresh cucumber juice, to religious counsel and magic rituals.