[Medical ethnology--what is it?]

Departing from illness as subjective experience of the patient and disease as objective term of medical use the concept of an explanatory model of illness permits to introduce a novel perception for a fundamental problem in modern medicine: The growing hiatus separating the medico-therapeutic means offered on one hand and the needs of the patient on the other hand. The model developed by Arthur Kleinmann asks for universal validity for every form of medicine and leads by its ethnological view on our medicine to interesting conclusions. It is emphasized that natural sciences and technology represent only bases for modern medicine. Their actual application and effects on the patient have always to be considered as results of a given culture. Embedded in appropriate social and historic perspectives they are extremely changeable and adaptable.