cooling mudpacks: the aesthetic quality of therapy 163
prefer the more pleasant option. Th is is not the case in all realms of experi-
ence though. In certain ritual contexts, such as the Sabarimala pilgrimage to a
mountaintop temple, ideally undertaken by foot, and Taipooja rituals, physical
austerities and suff ering are part of realizing one’s higher self.
The Aesthetics of Healing
Carol Laderman and Marina Roseman (1996) off ered the insight that “if
healing is to be eff ective or successful, the senses must be engaged” (4), but
we also need to ask whether some therapies invoke more pleasant sensory
reactions than others. Studies of the aesthetics of healing have neither com-
pared diff erent therapies nor examined the aesthetics of western biomedicine.
Th is may be due to the fact that aesthetic studies of healing focus on thera-
pies such as shamanistic healing that are more patently, more dramatically
sensual. An awareness of the feel, smell and color of Nepalese shamanistic
healing (Desjarlais 1992) and Chinese medicine (Farquhar 2002) is crucial
for making sense of the healing process, but the aesthetic characteristics of
these healing systems would take on an additional value if contrasted to the
aesthetic experience of undergoing biomedical treatment. Biomedical practi-
tioners do not explicitly try to create an aesthetic environment. Patients and
healers do not light incense and sing at biomedical facilities, and the main
aesthetic experiences are the eff ects of treatment or the sterile and putatively
neutral environment of the clinic, which, ironically, has its own “feel.” In add-
ition, biomedical practitioners sometimes need to suppress the aesthetics of
therapy through the use of anaesthetics. Th us, aesthetic experience appears
to be something that one tries to avoid in allopathic practice, and perhaps
the lack of an eff ort to create a positive aesthetic environment, the lack of an
alternative aesthetic for the patient to focus on, or the inadvertent creation of
an uninspiring hospital aesthetic (the fl at, modern interior, and the vaguely
antiseptic smell of the clinic), leads patients to focus more intently on the
visceral eff ects of treatment.
The Concept of “Cure” and the Ends of Healing
Little attention has been devoted to the concept of curing in social analyses
of health and illness. Th e term “cure” is applied in many medical contexts by
anthropologists and others, and its allopathic assumptions are usually taken for
granted as what one tries to do with an illness.^1