Me’ Winik: Discovery of the Biomedical Equivalence for a Maya Ethnomedical
Syndrome by Berlin and Jara
A)Introduction
1)This paper documents biliary disease for the first
time among the Tzeltal and the Tzotzil.
2)The authors elucidate the interface between the
ethnomedical illness model and the biomedical
disease complex.
3)They look at me’winik.
Market San Juan Chamula Mexico (Tzotzil, Maya)
• Ethnoepidemiological surveys show that
women have a relative risk of 6.6 to 1.
• Me’ winik is literally “mother-man”, is
described as an organ located in the
abdomen, below the sternum.
A) Explanatory Model
1) the Me’winik: a golf ball to tennis ball sized organ.
2) Vigorous exercise, carrying a heavy load, and suffering
a fall can lead to me’winik.
3) The me’winik may move around the mid abdomen.
4) When the pulsing organ rises too high, there is pain
and the outcome is likely to be fatal.
5) The organ may press on or twist on the uterus and
result in reversible sterility.
6) Both males and females are massaged by a midwife.
1) The anatomy, physiology, and pathology of this
folk syndrome do not correlate well with
biomedical descriptions of biliary disease.
2) In the past, it was presumed to be
gastroenteritis.
Medical Studies
The authors identified 8 cases of me’winik,
• 7 were confirmed as biliary disease by clinical
exam, and
• 5 were verified by follow-up X-ray exam.
Of the six patients in a second sample,
• 4 had a diagnosis of chronic cholecysitis or
inflammation of the gallbladder.
• In 2 cases there was gallstone formation.
1) The predominance of women with this condition is
not surprising.
2) Although both males and females suffer biliary
disease, the prevalence is higher in women than in
men worldwide.
• Interestingly, biliary disease does not appear
on the public health department’s
epidemiological statistics reports for this
region.
• Me’winik is probably either simply treated as a
gastrointestinal problem such as parasite
infection or inflamed colon, or as a
gynecological problem.
The successful correlation of the folk syndrome
me’winik with the biomedical diagnosis of biliary
disease, points out the need toward earlier entry
of anthropologists into health programs.