At times, it would seem that biomedicine has been quite unproblematically
integrated into the local aetiological system and into people’s health-seeking
itineraries. In some conversations with locals, gods and doctors and their systems of
healing seemed to complement one another. While illnesses (rog) that have a purely
physical cause (bhautik) and stem from physiological processes can only be treated
by doctors, deities’ possessed mediums are the only experts in curing forms of sorrow
deriving from the evil eye (nazar), distress originating from attack by external spirits
(b aharı atm a), sorrows deriving from the falling on some person of the shadow
(ch ay a) of fairies, problems caused by the action of a deity initiated by a person
against his enemy (gh at), and troubles triggered by the rage of a god when offended
by personal or collective human behaviour (dos
_
). According to this discourse,
doctors and gods seem to be granted different fields of competence depending on the
origin of the illness, whether natural or supernatural. This discourse legitimizes the
ongoing healing power of local gods despite the spread of biomedicine.