Book excerpt: The Anthropology of Health and Healing provides the first holistic approach to the study of medical anthropology. Over the past two decades, medical anthropology has been the most rapidly growing subfield in anthropology, and a number of medial anthropology texts have been published, focusing primarily on public policy and health care delivery systems. Yet while Anthropologists have researched topics related to medical anthropology for over 100 years, here Womack thoroughly surveys this richly diverse field and provides an integrated approach that links together the biological, psychological, social, communicative, epidemiological, philosophical, historical, and developmental factors that shape health and healing.