Advisers' Understandings and Experience
What is particularly notable is that more than half of the advisers (see table 15B) shared few or none of the Galenic understandings and three-fourths shared few or none of the Western ones. Despite this, most of the advisers had recommended both sorts of treatment at one time or another, with hospital doctors being recommended slightly more than herbal doctors despite the slightly greater sharing of understandings about herbal doctors.
In fact, as table 15D shows, about half of the practitioners recommended were originally discovered through someone telling the adviser about the type of care in question. Advisers report that they discovered the usefulness of hospital doctors on their own as often as they discovered herbal doctors in that way. This finding, seemingly at odds with the fact that more advisers shared some understandings about the Galenic scheme than had comparable understandings about the Western scheme, suggests that advisers credit their own
experience even if they have little basis for understanding why that experience was positive.
There can be little question that getting desired results is a central element in recommending that therapist to someone else. The question remains, however, how patients choose therapists in the first place, before they have experience with them. The existence of hospitals and doctors' offices with signs plays a role quite apart from elaborate understandings about the body and illness. People can decide to visit a hospital doctor because they have seen the hospitals they work in and, perhaps, because they are impressed by the number of people going in and out, the seriousness of the enterprise as indicated by erecting a building, or simply because they know that something concerning the treatment of illness is available. Similarly, they can visit an herbal doctor because they have heard it said that the care given is traditional, because the visit is less intimidating than going to someone in a white coat speaking English or standard Swahili,[15] or some other such consideration not necessarily based on the understandings involved in the Galenic scheme followed by the herbal doctors.