Original scientific paper

Folk Medicine: Healing With Magic

Mirjana Randić ; Ethnographic Museum in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

During 2000 and 2001, in preparing the exhibition on folk medicine, the Ethnographic museum in Zagreb undertook researches into the
topic. As there was a lot of writing about the methods of folk medicine
at the end of the 19th and throughout the first half of the 20th century, while there was fairly less evidence for the later period of time, the researches were organised to gather information in several
parts of Croatia, namely in Podravina, Slavonia, Lika, Hrvatsko primorje and the surroundings of Zadar. In such away we tried to find
out the relationship of the potential sick person towards the use of traditional methods of healing among the peasant as well as urban
population in the second half of the 20th century up to the present moment. We wanted to find out whether the methods of healing used
in folk medicine are still in use and if so - who are the persons that seek this kind of help, also who are the healers. Folk medicine uses in
fact a series of elements that can help preventing, curing or easing
various health problems of the individual, without asking help from the
official medicine. We can consider here two different approaches: the
one that uses rational and the the one that uses irrational methods. The latter one includes a magical and a religious component as well.
It is characteristic for folk medicine that all three approaches are intertwined and often difficult to look upon separately. This paper has the aim to present certain results to which the researches have led, especially so considering same magical procedures that are still in use
today with the purpose to heal illnesses that supposedly have their origin in magic.

Keywords

magic; folk medicine; magical procedures; sorcerer; distribution; Croatia

Hrčak ID:

35630

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/35630

Publication date:

14.4.2009.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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