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 )
[ The Spirit Catches You and You ]
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