Folk medicine

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term folk medicine (also folk medicine ), which cannot be precisely defined, includes the knowledge of diseases , healing methods and remedies handed down in the non-medical population . The World Health Organization (WHO) describes the folk medicine handed down and cultivated in ethnic cultures as traditional medicine . The ethnomedicine examined some of the world ethnobotany and ethno pharmacy of individual nations.

Emergence

The emergence of folk medicine goes back to the prehistory of mankind . In addition to the early gathering of experience through pure trial and error - for example of medicinal plants or medicinal products of animal or mineral origin - there were also observations of animals that instinctively eat certain plants when they are sick .

Conclusions and theoretical considerations were likely to have arisen early on, such as the preferred use of plants with liver-shaped leaves for liver diseases or of yellow-flowering plants for jaundice according to the doctrine of signatures . Such considerations are classified by their critics as superstitions . The guiding principle is the assumption that similar metabolic functions in humans and plants lead to similar shapes; the gift of such a plant could lead to a harmonization of those metabolic functions in sick people. Such considerations lead to the generation of hypotheses which must be confirmed or refuted by medical practice (see also herbal medicine ). In ancient medicine there are the first written sources for earlier folk medicine.

Methods and means of folk medicine

Since the Stone Age , healing methods have also included surgical interventions (“folk surgery”), as archaeological finds show. For example, evidence of trepanations and other surgical interventions can also be found in the ancient Egyptian medical book of wounds (the Edwin Smith papyrus , see also Medicine in Ancient Egypt ). This also includes sweating cures , various types of therapeutic fasting or splinting of broken bones. Especially in folk medicine there are also forms of application of organotherapy (cf. also Kyranids ). Folk medicine also has philosophical and religious components, many of which still characterize Lent today.

European cultural area

The medical folk knowledge in the European cultural area (for example in a "Germanic medicine" that existed before and next to monastery medicine) has been further developed over generations and is now closely related to naturopathy . The separation from conventional medicine began at the latest in the 19th century with increasing medical research at universities and the development of chemical drugs . Modern preparations are very often based on active ingredients that were also used in folk medicine. However, the respective active ingredients are isolated, chemically analyzed and some are produced synthetically.

Folk medicine and conventional medicine

In the Middle Ages , herbalists ( Wurzler ) and the Bader had an important medical function, especially when the use of a doctor was too expensive. The professional group of the Bader was considered dishonorable until around 1400 and only received guild rights in 1548 . Together with the barbers , they were so-called craft doctors - in contrast to doctors with academic training  - and their training was precisely regulated. With the advent of medical studies , there were violent disputes between "old and new school" doctors, which continue to have an impact today. In Germany and partly also in Austria and Switzerland, lay doctors or farmers' doctors played an important role in the medical care of people and cattle in rural areas until the middle of the 20th century , such as the Höllerhansl , which is famous far beyond Styria .

Parts of folk medicine, the "folk medicines", were given a medical upgrade with publications by doctors such as Johann Friedrich Osiander (1826) or Georg Friedrich Most (1843).

Worldwide

Aztec medicine traditions can be found in Mexican folk medicine . In China's population, folk medicine is almost on an equal footing with conventional medicine, and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is taught at universities. After the Second World War , many so-called barefoot doctors worked in rural areas there, as there were not enough trained TCM doctors. The same applies to many other regions around the world.

literature

  • Eberhard Wolff: “Folk Medicine” - Farewell on installments: From the definition to the heuristic understanding of the term. In: Journal of Folklore. Volume 94, 1998, pp. 233-257.
  • Eberhard Wolff: Between “folk medicine” and “naturopathy”: Zurich medical alternatives . In: Gesnerus. Volume 58, 2001, pp. 276-283 (digitized version ) .
  • Eberhalb Wolff: Folk medicine. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . December 27, 2014 .
  • Michael Simon: “Folk Medicine” in the early 20th century. On the source value of the Atlas of German Folklore (= Studies on Folk Culture , Volume 28). Society for Folklore in Rhineland-Palatinate, Mainz 2003, ISBN 3-926052-27-9 (habilitation thesis University of Münster 1996, 286 pages).
  • Carly Seifarth: Superstition and Magic in Folk Medicine. Bohmeier, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-89094-436-1 (Dissertation University of Leipzig 1913, 134 pages).
  • Françoise Loux: The child and its body in folk medicine. Edited by Kurt Lüscher. Afterword by Kurt Lüscher. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1991 (original title: Le jeune enfant et son corps dans la médecine traditional ), translated by Hainer Kober, ISBN 3-12-935020-9 .
  • Enrique Blanco Cruz: From the common disease to the disease of the devil. Folk medicine in Peru. Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-921600-36-7 .
  • Carlos Watzka : The importance and structure of the therapy of mental illnesses in early modern folk medicine using the example of the Duchy of Styria. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 24, 2005, pp. 144-161. ISSN  0177-5227
  • Paul Diepgen : German folk medicine, scientific medicine and culture. Enke, Stuttgart 1935, DNB 572859309 .
  • Paul Diepgen: Folk Medicine and Scientific Medicine: Their Historical Relationships. In: Volk und Volkstum (Jahrbuch für Volkskunde) 2, 1937, S: 37–53; also in: Folk Medicine: Problems and Research History. Edited by Elfriede Grabner, Darmstadt 1967, pp. 200–222.
  • Elfriede Grabner (Ed.): Folk Medicine: Problems and Research History (= Paths of Research , Volume 63), Scientific Book Association, Darmstadt 1967 DNB 458546542 .
  • Paul van Dijk: Volksgeneeskunst in Nederland en Vlaanderen (The folksgeneeskundige recepten zijn mede made by Hanneke Winterwerp). Deventer 1981.
  • Max Höfler: Folk medicine botany of the Germanic peoples. Vienna 1908 (= sources and research on German folklore , 5); Reprint: VWB - Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, Berlin 1990 (= ethnomedicine and consciousness research: historical materials , volume 11), ISBN 3-927408-41-7 .
  • Heinrich Marzell : Folk medicine. In: Adolf Spamer (Ed.): Die deutsche Volkskunde , Volume I. Berlin and Leipzig 1934/35, pp. 168–182, DNB 368585891 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adolf F. Dörler: The animal world in the sympathetic Tyrolean folk medicine. In: Journal of the Association for Folklore 8, 1898, pp. 38–48 and 168–180.
  2. ^ Johannes Jühling: The animals in the German folk medicine of old and new times according to the printed and unprinted sources in the royal public library in Dresden. With an appendix of blessings and a preface by M. Höfler. Polytechnische Buchhandlung R. Schulze, Mittweida 1900, OCLC 6663973 .
  3. ↑ See also Max Baldinger: Superstition and folk medicine in dentistry. Basel 1936 (= Swiss Archive for Folklore. Volume 25, 1936, Issue 1 f.)
  4. ↑ Ernst Julius Gurlt : History of surgery and its practice. Popular Surgery - Ancient Times - Middle Ages - Renaissance. 3 volumes, Berlin 1898; Reprint Hildesheim 1964; Digitized: Volume 1 ; Volume 2 ; Volume 3
  5. ↑ Anton Curic: Health Encyclopedia AZ. Eco, Eltville 1999, ISBN 3-933468-52-3 , p. 70.
  6. ↑ Cf. for example William Marshall : Newly opened, miraculous medicine box, in it all sorts of thorough information about how our forefathers treated the healing powers of animals can be found. A. Twietmeyer, Leipzig 1894. Facsimile edition: F. Englisch, Wiesbaden 1981, ISBN 3-88140-091-5 .
  7. ↑ Max Höfler: The folk medical organotherapy and its relationship to the cult victim. Stuttgart / Berlin / Leipzig 1908.
  8. ^ Gundolf Keil : Medicine among the Germanic peoples. In: Heinrich Beck , Dieter Geuenich , Heiko Steuer (Hrsg.): Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde. 2nd, completely revised edition. Founded by Heinrich Beck, Herbert Jankuhn , Hans Kuhn and Reinhard Wenskus . Edited by Rosemarie Müller, 35 volumes and 2 register volumes, Berlin / New York (1968–) 1973–2008, here: Supplementary Volume 77: Classical Studies - Classical Studies - Cultural Studies: Income and Perspectives after 40 Years Real Lexicon of Germanic Classical Studies. Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 317–388.
  9. ↑ Max Höfler: Folk medicine and superstition in Upper Bavaria's present and past. Munich 1893; Reprinted Walluf / Nendeln 1976.
  10. ↑ Gottfried Lammert: Folk medicine and medical superstition in Bavaria and the neighboring districts, based on the history of medicine and culture. Julien, Würzburg 1869, OCLC 937180830 .
  11. ^ Heinrich area code: German folk medicine in the past and present. In: Studies on Religious Folklore , Section B, Book 9, Dresden / Leipzig 1939, pp. 3–48; also in: Folk Medicine: Problems and Research History. Edited by Elfriede Grabner, Darmstadt 1967, pp. 223-277.
  12. ↑ Cf. Victor Fossel: Folk Medicine and Medicinischer Superstlaube in Steiermark. Graz 1886; Reprint Wiesbaden 1974.
  13. ↑ Eberhard Wolff (2005), p. 1457.
  14. ^ Bernard Ortiz de Montellano: Aztec sources of some Mexican folk medicine. In: Richard P. Steiner (Ed.): Folk medicine. The art and the sciences (American Chemical Society), Washington DC 1986, pp. 1-22.