Shamanism, epilepsy & American medicine

"The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the collision of Two Cultures"
-by Anne Fadiman
From the back cover- "" The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severs epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy. Winner of the National Book Critic's Circle Award for Nonfiction, Anne Faddiman's compassionate account of this cultural impasse is Literary journalism at it's finest."
If you enjoy books about medicine or cultural anthropology, read this..Fadiman tells the story in a non-judgmental way, yet she became very involved with Lia's parents and also the doctors involved.
I found the Hmong to be fascinating people(I wanna BE one!)...
from the book-
"When Lia was about three months old, her older sister Yer slammed the front door of the Lee's apartment. A few moment's later, Lia's eye's rolled up, her arms jerked over her head, and she fainted. The Lees had little doubt what happened. Despite the careful installation of Lia's soul during the "blu plig" ceremony, the noise of the door had been so profoundly frightening that her soul had fled her body and become lost. They recognized the resulting symptoms as "gaug dab peg", which means "the spirit catches you and you fall down".
..."It(epilepsy) is an illness well known to the Hmong, who regard it with ambivalence. On the one hand it is ackknowledged to be a serious and potentially dangerous condition...On the other hand, the Hmong consider "gaug dab peg" to be an illness of some distinction...Hmong epileptics often become shamans...Although shamanism is an arduous calling that requires years of training with a master in order to learn the ritual techniques and chants, it confers an enormous amount of social status within the community and publicly marks the "txiv neeb"(person with a healing spirit) as a person of high moral character, since a healing spirit would never choose a no-account host. Even if an epileptic turns out not to be elected to host a "neeb"(healing spirit), his illness, with it's thrilling aura of the supramundane, singles him out as a person of consequence."
Fascinating read!
Ah, Hell, I can't say it any better than the reviewers-
"This is a book that should be deeply disturbing to anyone who has given so much as a moment's thought to the state of American Medicine. But it is much more...People are presented as Fadiman saw them, in their humility and their frailty- and their nobility."
Read this book! :)