cooling mudpacks: the aesthetic quality of therapy 165
which translates equally well as “health,” “well-being” and “happiness,” “health”
can be something that is constantly improved upon, a presence of well-being
or vibrance which, ideally, can be continually enhanced.
Th e concept of cure and the degree of emphasis on this goal may explain
what I saw as a lesser attention to the aesthetic quality of the process of ther-
apy in allopathic psychiatry in Kerala. However, this analysis of the ideology of
cure in biomedicine is somewhat incipient. Th ere are issues that would require
additional investigation to more fully evaluate the implications of the ideal of
curing. For example, there is a diff erence between the ideals of biomedicine
and its practice, and there exists a diversity of practices within biomedicine
that can undermine any universal claims about this medical system.^2 I also
want to emphasize that I am not suggesting biomedicine is at all times exclu-
sively focused on curing, on the fi nal results of therapy. As will be discussed
below, some diseases are considered chronic or incurable, and some physicians
work only on easing suff ering. I suggest that it is the degree of emphasis on cure
and how this ideal shapes practice that leads to a lesser attention to the pleas-
antness of the process of treatment. Furthermore, it is not simply the concept
behind a single term, “cure,” that requires investigation, but the practices and
the variety of goals associated with the ideal of the removal of a pathogen and
restoration of “health”—such as the use of invasive techniques, eff orts to eradi-
cate a pathogen and attempts to relieve symptoms—that merit scrutiny.
Th e biomedical and history of medicine literatures give us some, though
limited, insight into the origins, the historical trajectories and the contem-
porary meaning of cure in biomedicine. Biomedical literature reveals little
discussion of the meaning of cure, refl ecting perhaps the underscrutinized,
taken-for-granted nature of this ideal. “Cure” is not defi ned in Black’s Medical
Dictionary, or in most medical dictionaries and reference books I reviewed at
a major medical school library. Also, no defi nition of cure is brought up in any
psychiatric or general medical textbook I examined. One medical dictionary
that did defi ne “cure” did so as follows:
- restoration of health of a person affl icted with a disease or other disorder.
- the favorable outcome of the treatment of a disease or other disorder. 3. a
course of therapy, a medication, a therapeutic measure, or another remedy used
in treatment of a medical problem... (Mosby’s Medical, Nursing & Allied Health
Dictionary 2002: 459).
Th e Oxford English Dictionary’s fi fth defi nition for “cure”, “[t]o heal (a dis-
ease or wound); fi g. to remedy, rectify, remove (an evil of any kind),” contains
the notion of removing, which I would argue is an assumption in contemporary
allopathic practice that is not covered in the medical dictionary defi nition