Unconventional therapists and their patients in Polish traditional folk medicine

Abstract

Folk medicine is a clearly distinct, comparatively homogeneous and closed system which has arisen from many centuries of isolation and self-sufficiency of the people of the Polish countryside. A feature of this special system involved tradition and relatively consistent illness behaviors, resistant to broader influences of the global society, despite the gradually growing role of modernization factors. An inherent feature of folk culture that impacted behaviors and attitudes of the rural population towards illness was the co-occurrence and overlapping of mystical-magical and religious elements. These applied both to the views on etiology, prevention, diagnosis and therapeutic treatment. Special functions in healing activities in the countryside were performed by the elderly. The matters related to health and illness were the province of the elderly as they were respected and revered for their life’s wisdom and life experience. The purpose of the article is to show the specificity of non-medical treatment in the context of social and cultural determinants, placing special emphasis on the role and importance of the elderly in exercising treatment roles.