May 23, 2008

Academic Medicine Meets Traditional African Healing

By MEGAN LINDOW

Cyril Naidoo stands at the front of a crowded conference room, talking about a concept in family medicine called the iceberg theory. "When a patient comes to us with a headache, our job is to try and get to the underlying causes of that headache," he tells his audience. "The tip is the presenting symptom — the iceberg is what lies underneath."

That kind of talk is often given to first-year medical students by someone like Dr. Naidoo, who directs the department of family