Management of Animal Health and Disease in an Indigenous Andean Community

摘要

This report is a part of a series of publications about the agricultural herding in an Andean community. The present work describes ethnoveterinarian management of small ruminants. It documents the 'folk' classification, the ethnoetiology (natural or supernatural) of disease, the techniques of control of prevention of livestock diseases that are most common in the community, and the treatment of these. The data is compared systematically with those supplied by modern veterinary medicine. This way it is possible to analyze the reach of the veterinary knowledge of the Indians and the efficiency of the resulting practices. This analysis reopens the old debate over the rationality of peasants. Of course, peasants are not aware of much technical veterinary information. But apparently, in an 'irrational' manner, they do not use the knowledge that they do possess--especially to prevent or to control epidemics among their herds.