Magical Medicine

The Folkloric Component of Medicine in the Folk Belief, Custom, and Ritual of the Peoples of Europe and America

Wayland D. Hand

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• ISBN:
  9780520311770
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

"Distilling baby's first tear into the eye of a blind man to make him see"; "Plucking herbs upward for emetics and downward for purgatives"; "Stroking one's goiter with a dead man's hand to make the growth shrivel away"--these are not beliefs and customs found among primitive peoples in remote parts of the world but are examples of hundreds of items of magical medicine found in Professor Hand's remarkable collection of essays dealing with this neglected field in twentieth-century Europe and America.Fantasy and imagination still have free reign in people's lives, more than any of us will admit. In a time when science is preeminent, irrational thinking ca lay hold on the mid of man as much as in olden times.Folk medicine has expanded in recent years to include holistic medicine and other forms of alternative medicine, but little attention has been paid to magical medicine. Despite the benefits of medical science in an advance culture, the magical medicine of Europe and America has clung to an unusually rich and original body of magical lore that lies at the base of its folk medical thought. Ethnomedicine in the inner cities of America can be better understood by practitioners who know something about folk medicine and, especially, if they kno some of the basics of magical medicine.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Selected Bibliography
• Introduction
• 1. Folk Curing: The Magical Component*
• 2. The Magical Transference of Disease
• 3. The Folk Healer: Calling and Endowment
• 4. Deformity, Disease, and Physical Ailment as Divine Retribution
• 5. Hangmen, the Gallows, and the Dead Man's Hand in American Folk Medicine
• 6. Plugging, Nailing, Wedging, and Kindred Folk Medical Practices
• 7. Measuring and Plugging: The Magical Containment and Transfer of Disease
• 8. “Measuring” with String, Thread, and Fibre: A Practice in Folk Medical Magic
• 9. Magical Treatment of Disease by Outlining the Ailing Part
• 10. “Over and Out”: Magical Divestment in Folk Belief and Custom
• 11. “Passing Through”: Folk Medical Magic and Symbolism
• 12. Animal Sacrifice in American Folk Curative Practice
• 13. The Mole in Folk Medicine: A Survey from Indie Antiquity to Modern America
• 14. Physical Harm, Sickness, and Death by Conjury A Survey of the Sorcerer's Evil Art in America
• 15. Witch-Riding and Other Demonic Assault in American Folk Legend
• 16. The Evil Eye in its Folk Medical Aspects: A Survey of North America
• 17. Animal Intrusion into the Human Body: A Primitive Aetiology of Disease
• 18. Padepissers and Wekschissers: A Folk Medical Inquiry into the Cause of Styes
• 19. Folk Medical Inhalants in Respiratory Disorders
• 20. Curative Practice in Folk Tales
• 21. The Curing of Blindness In Folk Tales
• 22. Folk Medical Magic and Symbolism in the West
• 23. The Common Cold in Utah Folk Medicine
• Index