Part III: Comanche ghost sickness: A biocultural perspective

Abstract

A biocultural perspective is used to integrate organic and psychogenic explanations of Comanche ghost sickness, a peripheral facial paralysis. Emphasis is placed upon the underlying biological conditions that predispose the ghost sickness victim and the social utility of the culturally patterned disease expression. An idealized disease cosmology traces the biobehavioral route to ghost sickness symptoms.