Auscultation of Two Worlds

Dr. Vincent Ziga's "auscultations" -- soundings, with or without a stethoscope, of people and their culture, medically, socially, culturally, and spiritually -- Stone Age people of New Guinea, where he spent over 25 years as a sociomedical worker, and people of the contemporary civilized world -- make absorbing reading. Raised in Germany during the Nazi era, he saw what could happen when a whole nation lost sight of the foundations of its being, and he decided to devote his life to the pursuit of involved caring. Among other things, he sp3ent many years researching "Kuru", a fatal viral disease of the central nervous system. As important, he learned much about the people and about the medical and social approaches that must be utilized to help them make the tortuous adjustments to encroaching modernism.