Folk healing and biomedicine: culture clash or complimentary approach?

Health care professionals are often faced with clients who are using alternative healing techniques along with biomedicine. A comparison of biomedicine in its cultural context to folk healing serves to highlight the cultural aspects of both systems. The cult of Fidencio, a popular healer in northern Mexico and southern United States, is used to illustrate a folk healing system. Biomedicine is presented in a historical context to show the American value of scientific objectivity. Current interest in alternative healing in the United States challenges the absolute primacy of scientific rationalism and opens the door for complementary approaches.