An Imperative to Cure: Principles and Practice of Q'eqchi' Maya Medicine in Belize

By: James B. Waldram

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Synopsis: James B. Waldram&’s groundbreaking study, An Imperative to Cure: Principles and Practice of Q&’eqchi&’ Maya Medicine in Belize, explores how our understanding of Indigenous therapeutics changes if we view them as forms of &“medicine&” instead of &“healing.&” Bringing an innovative methodological approach based on fifteen years of ethnographic research, Waldram argues that Q&’eqchi&’ medical practitioners access an extensive body of empirical knowledge and personal clinical experience to diagnose, treat, and cure patients according to a coherent ontology and set of therapeutic principles. Not content to leave the elements of Q&’eqchi&’ cosmovision to the realm of the imaginary and beyond human reach, Q&’eqchi&’ practitioners conceptualize the world as essentially material and meta/material, consisting of complex but knowable forces that impact health and well-being in real and meaningful ways—forces with which Q&’eqchi&’ practitioners must engage to cure their patients.