Traditional Medicine & Women Healers in Trinidad: Postnatal Heal

This book discusses the relationship between healers and modern healthcare practitioners in Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. It focuses on fold maseuses, and the new mothers and newborns they treat. The study is divided into three major chapters.

Chapter 1 explores the demographies of masseuses, their trainig, activity levels, renumeration, relationship with others, and types of disorders they treat.

Chapter 2 examines the care of the new mother with respect to seclusion and pollution, special foods, "setting" the womb back in place, herbal baths, and the chatti [thanksgiving ceremony].

Chapter 3 highlights the care of the newborn with respet to breast milk, neonatal jaundice, dew and evil elements, thrush and heat rash, and infant massage.

The two medical systems are presented in the context of racial, ethnic, class and gender dynamics which give rise to issues of power and control. The study is located in the political-economic context of the Third World which has a history of dependency on fereign goods and serves rooted in the plantation economy.