1. I have explored definitions of health elsewhere (Janzen 1985:64-67; 1989, in Sullivan, ed.; and Feierman and janzen: forthcoming). The first two of these discussions concentrate on a series of health concepts, including "health as what physicians do," "health as the absence of disease," ''health as functional normality," ''health as adaptation," "positive health," and "health utopias," along with "the social reproduction of health." In Sullivan, ed., 1989, these are interlaced with "verbal concepts" in African healing. Positive health indicators are difficult to encapsulate or codify since they depend upon particular programs to carry them out. Most national biomedical health programs are

defined in terms of "the absence of disease" and lend themselves to demographic indicators of mortality, morbidity, and fertility. I have tried to develop the "social reproduction" definition of health because it seems uniquely suited to evaluate ngoma ritual healing. [BACK]