Abstract Accepted

Early Evolution of Medicine and Early Evolution of Mind: Ontological and Epistemological Considerations. 

            Disease represents a principal tentacle of natural selection and a staple theme of evolutionary medicine.  However, it is through a small portal of entry and a very long lineage that disease as sickness entered behavioral spaces and human consciousness.  This has a long evolutionary history.  Anyone interested in the origins of medicine and psychiatry as social institution has to start with analysis how mind and body were conceptualized and played out behaviorally following the pongid/hominin split and thereafter.  The early evolution of medicine provides a template for clarifying elemental characteristics of mind and minding.  Sickness and healing in chimpanzees represents an early manifestation of (ethno) medicine, termed a behavioral tradition, which is found played out in routines of helping, caring, and healing as well as other social behaviors.  Chimpanzees seem to know they are sick since they resort to self-medication when exhibiting signs and symptoms of disease.  And they help those exhibiting physical and cognitive disability.  Among hominins awareness of consequences and implications of sickness and coping with them represented an important feature of human consciousness and major factor in the origins of vaunted human abilities involving language, cognition, and culture as we know them.  A philosophical examination of the early evolution of sickness and healing provides a window into an understanding of evolving human capacities such as self awareness, awareness and implications of suffering, theory of mind, altruism, and morality. 

Key words: Disease; Evolutionary medicine; Pongid/hominin split; Human consciousness
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*MD. Professor of Psychiatry and Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, 3811 Ohara Street, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, 15213
Email: hfabregajr@verizon.net

Int Seminar MBC, Jan 2010. Accepted