Familiar Medicine: Everyday Health Knowledge and Practice in Today's Vietnam

4. Traditional Household Medicine

103 4 Traditional Household Medicine The easy currency enjoyed by traditional remedies in popular memory reveals an immediacy of practical use, even as it conceals profound change. Ten, and especially twenty years ago, many Vietnamese depended almost entirely on everyday household remedies for treating all but the most serious illness; in the past decade, this situation may have changed forever. The changes have been neither universal nor uniform. While the national and local need to depend on herbal remedies is passing rapidly, and cheap, generic Western drugs have won much confidence and market share, popular knowledge and transmission of traditional household remedies persist as a part of everyday family life and the role of motherhood. The everyday poetic, rhythmic recitation of recipes, the showing off of technical skill and correct knowledge, the assiduous passing on of authority , the enthusiasm with which traditional remedies are discussed all locate traditional household medicine at the center of an active oral tradition, and a domain of practical, embodied knowledge. At the same time, some people are scornful of herbal remedies, especially educated urban people: “Herbs are a waste of time. They’re hard to find. Only country bumpkins [nha que] have that sort of time to go looking. There are too many recipes; you never know which one is the best. If you have ten people, they will tell you ten different recipes, all better than the others. How do you know?” (Hanoi father). In this chapter, I will describe some of the variety of household traditional medicines, at the same time pointing up certain formal and practical reasons why they have remained important and, despite attitudes like the one above, appear likely to do so into the future. Even with an influx of global pharmaceutical commodities, home remedies have continued to be durably ensconced in the practical logics of local health habitus. Subsequently, we will see how the basic approach to the appropriation and transmission of home remedies is currently being applied concerning antibiotics. North, South, East, or West? As described in chapter 2, thuoc nam, or Southern medicine, is the official name for traditional household remedies. At the local level, nomenclature varies: Southern medicine commonly differentiates family herbal recipes from Northern and Western medicine. Otherwise, they might be described simply and generically as “medicine” (thuoc), “our medicine” (thuoc ta), medicinal recipes or prescriptions (bai thuoc), or medicinal herbs (la thuoc), or described individually by the name of the herb or technique. Competing medical systems in Vietnam generate much popular debate over their relative merits. People have sentimental attachment to traditional medicine, expressed in the metaphors and adjectives used to describe it and its actions, as this chapter will show. Western medicine is recognized as powerfully curative, and its many side effects and incompatibilities are simply to be put up with. The binary of East and West is played out in a further series of comparisons and oppositions involving, among other things, identity and notions of “otherness.” Eastern medicine is seen as compatible with the body, as harmless, nutritious, natural, and cooling, while Western medicine is very much an alien substance penetrating the body to do a job—it 104 ✦ chapter 4 is hot, toxic, addictive, chemical, and wastes the body. Eastern medicine, complete in curing, is popularly held as going to the root of the disease by restoring the body’s harmony or balance, while Western medicine is quick and combative, an added disruption to an already weak and troubled system . Eastern medicine is time consuming and relies on local access to herbs and thus on neighbors and family. Western medicine is “easy to take” (meaning there is nothing to prepare), as well as scientific and modern . At the top end of the market, Northern medicine and Western medicine compete for ultimate status, with Northern medicine seemingly the current winner, at least in terms of its conspicuously expensive remedies and regimens.1 The following list delineates the perceived characteristics of Eastern versus Western medicines: Eastern Medicine Western Medicine Slow, complete cure (ngam Fast cure (khoi nhanh); for lau, khoi han) acute cases (cao cap) Light (nhe) Heavy (nang) Few or no side effects (khong Many side effects, especially cong phat gi) for children Cooling (mat) Hot; causes ulcers, constipation, deafness Nutritious (bo), harmless (lanh) Toxic (doc); wastes the body; makes children slow to develop Appropriate (hop) Addictive (quen thuoc) Common, rural (nha que, Scientific (khoa hoc), modern dan da), primitive...