Abstract
AT a meeting of the West London Medico-Chirurg-ical Society on January 13, Dr. J. D. Rolleston read a paper on “Folk-lore and Medicine”. He said that since the publication in 1927 of the late Dr. Dan HcKenzie's work entitled “The Infancy of Medicine: an Enquiry into the influence of Folk-lore upon the Evolution of Scientific Medicine”, the subject of folklore in connexion with medicine has attracted little attention in Great Britain, in marked contrast with the enthusiasm which it has provoked on the Continent. The various prophylactic and therapeutic measures in folk-lore medicine, in which the curative methods far outnumber the preventive, can be ranged under one or more of the following headings: (1) transference of the disease to other persons, animals or inanimate objects; (2) animal, plant or mineral remedies; (3) religious influences, including the invocation of special saints; (4) the healing power attributed to water in the form of wells, springs, fountains and streams; (5) the mystical power of odd numbers; (6) repellent and disgusting remedies, including coprotherapy, for the purpose of drawing out the evil spirit supposed to be the cause of the disease; (7) miscellaneous causes, such as the doctrine of signatures, constriction by rings, charms connected with death or the grave, etc. The diseases and symptoms for which the largest number of folk-lore remedies and preventive methods have been applied are whooping cough, ‘ague’, including not only malaria, but also as its etymology indicates, any acute fever, epilepsy and convulsions of any kind, rheumatism, consumption, eye diseases, skin diseases, especially warts, cattle diseases, headache, toothache, jaundice, hæmorrhages of any kind, and bites of snakes and scorpions. After giving numerous examples of folk-lore medicine in whooping cough, epilepsy, rheumatism and jaundice, Dr. Holiest on concluded by saying that, though many folk-lore remedies have become obsolete, some are still practised, not only by the inhabitants of remote country districts, but also by educated persons in large cities.
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Folk-lore and Medicine. Nature 143, 111–112 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143111c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143111c0