Humanities in Medicine / Howard Spiro Lecture: "The Spirit Enters and You Fall Down"

Fifteen years have elapsed since the publication of Prof Fadiman’s “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”. Its story recounts a battle between Doctors and Demons that resulted in a tragic cultural misunderstanding and the death of an epileptic Hmong child. The author spent seven painstaking years in researching this modern tragedy whose costly lesson is the central role of cultural awareness and sensitivity in encounters between doctors and their patients. This need grows each day in America as physicians enter the lives of so many immigrant groups who are coming to America. The book also serves another important function as an example of the valuable role for health care workers and students of reading stories about other cultures. Just as we learn the cultural practices and differences of the Hmong people in  “The Spirit Catches You…”,  books on other cultures permit the reader to become an “innocent spectator” of the world with a better understanding and empathy for individuals whose cultures we do not share or do not understand. The vicarious experiencing of the Hmong culture so richly and movingly conveyed by Professor Fadiman represents a realm of knowledge that is essential for a modern physician. The knowledge contained therein might have changed the outcome of this modern tragedy.