Through a continuous and deliberate juxtaposition of materials from Europe and Melanesia, Andrew J. Strathern shows that, from one viewpoint, the ways in which the life-worlds of other cultures have been portrayed have inevitably been influenced by European categories of understanding; while, from another viewpoint, there are indeed similarities between, e.g., the humoral medical theories of ancient Greece and humoral notions in New Guinea cultures today. Other topics taken up for discussion are ideas about the body, health, and sickness; trance and healing; the concept of embodiment and its uses in contemporary theorizing in anthropology; and the understanding of spirit possession as a form of historical consciousness.