My concerns in this study have been to examine Huli concepts of illness, and to analyse the expression of these concepts in their responses to the range of illnesses that affects them. This task has involved my presenting data of rather different sorts. I have included more information about the burden of illness and its medical nature than is usual in an anthropological account. Conversely, details of a society's social organisation and cosmology usually have little place in a medical study, which would be more epidemiologically based. With some notable exceptions, an extended portrayal of the society's historical experience would not appear in a work of either sort. In this final chapter I draw together these various strands more explicitly than I have attempted to do as yet. First, I examine the main influences upon the decisions concerning interpretation and action that individuals must make when faced by illness. Secondly, I look at the relationship between the Huli medical system and other aspects of their society. And thirdly, I examine the relevance of this research to the study of social change.

Decisions in illness

This study is based upon the examination of a large number of cases of illness, comprising the totality of illness in one geographical area and a large number of cases from other places. I adopted this approach for a number of reasons. It allowed representative conclusions concerning the differential stress that individuals place upon the wide range of alternative responses available to them when ill.