A medical system that explains illness as being due to acts or wishes of other people or supernatural beings and forces. There is no room for accidents. Adherents to personalistic medical systems believe that the causes and cures of illness are not to be found only in the natural world. Curers usually must use supernatural means to understand what is wrong with their patients and to return them to health. Typical causes of illness in personalistic medical systems include intrusion of foreign objects into the body by supernatural means, spirit possession, loss, or damage, and bewitching. Most of the non-western world traditionally accepted a personalistic explanation for illness. Today, it is mostly found among people in small-scale societies and some subcultures of larger nations. See naturalistic medical system.