Anne Fadiman Quote
It would never have occurred to them to emulate Luis Estevez, a pediatrician at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, who has referred Puerto Rican and Dominican patients to a Santeria high priest as he might refer them to an opthalmologist, or Yasmin Collazo, a psychiatrist at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, who has allowed a Mexican curandero, or folk healer, to perform a cleansing ceremony in the hospital for a schizophrenic patient. Dr. Collazo said that after the visit, the patient was far more compliant in taking her antipsychotic medications, which she believed the curandero had sanctified.
Anne Fadiman
It would never have occurred to them to emulate Luis Estevez, a pediatrician at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, who has referred Puerto Rican and Dominican patients to a Santeria high priest as he might refer them to an opthalmologist, or Yasmin Collazo, a psychiatrist at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, who has allowed a Mexican curandero, or folk healer, to perform a cleansing ceremony in the hospital for a schizophrenic patient. Dr. Collazo said that after the visit, the patient was far more compliant in taking her antipsychotic medications, which she believed the curandero had sanctified.