Hot-cold medicine revisited

Anthropologists like George Foster have argued over the origin of Latin American hot-cold medicine since the 1950s. Some argue that it originated within the indigenous populations of Latin America while others argue that hot-cold medicine originated from European humoral medicine. In this paper, I take another look at this debate, focusing on how its practice varies from community to community and relating the debate to changes that have occurred in the discipline of anthropology in recent years. I also look at other lines of evidence, such as the linguistics used in association with hot-cold medicine and the nearly universal existence of the hot-cold dichotomy, in order to support the theory that hot-cold medicine originated within the indigenous groups of Latin America.