Folk Medicine/Natives/Consumption

Question 1

What are the four characteristics that define a folk medicine profession?

Answer 1

• select body of knowledge of usefulness to the public
• controlled entry and practice
• period of training and apprenticeship
• private language, ritual and practice.

Question 2

What are the two approaches to healing common to N.America?

Answer 2

• Metaphysical: supernatural forces create illness

- Physical: (European) etiology and therapy based on objective observation of physical disorders

Question 3

Name some diseases that Natives got because of Europeans

Answer 3

-TB
-Diarrheic diseases
-Fevers (especially malaria)
-Rhumatism
-Venerial Disease
-Gout
-Kidney stones
Smallpox
Children: whooping cough, intestinal worms.

Question 4

Native remedies:

Answer 4

herbal remedies, sweating ovens (health and steam), bled for fevers and inflammations, good and aring for gangrene wounds and amputations.

• good with hygene
• made casts from bark, could re-set fractures better than Europeans at the time

Question 5

DEFINE: PERSONALISTIC VS NATURALISTIC

Answer 5

PERSONALISTIC: ore ancient, more spiritual (gods will and witch, etc.) take action to prevent sick persons is the victim and responsibility is beyond patients control.
NATURALISTIC: unbalanced, not about spiritual but natural flow.

Question 6

Name the three European folk medicine assumptions underlying charms:

Answer 6

-Disease was foreign presence in body needing to be exorcized (the spell)
-Religious language possessed a mystical power which could be deployed practically (the medicine)
-Special qualities of the healer
>inherited lore
>mystical healing using charms
>a belief that the medieval church had curative powers

Question 7

white magic

Answer 7

appealing directly to god for healing through prayers in latin

Question 8

What was the overlying theme of European folk medicine?

Answer 8

Spell, medicine, and healer could not go without each other.

> with the right person and right spell a potion could work and take on healing properties.

Question 9

What was a preventative measure to ensure that your child would survive its first few months?

Answer 9

by placing a red bracelet on it, the bracelet would anchor the child to this world.

Question 10

what was the thought behind a weapon salve?

Answer 10

the healer would take the weapon/knife and anoint it with a ointment and rub it on the wound. It was believed that you do not just lose blood, buy you also lose your vital spirit, which can be held in the weapon.

Question 11

what does “the royal touch” mean?

Answer 11

only those people who had magical healing properties had a legitimate claim to the throne. AKA: divine right of the king.
>if there was a claim to the throne they had to heal someone first. A common glandular problem (scrofula) was an easy one to pass the test. (a bath, clean clothes, and a good meal usually does it)

Question 12

HOW DID EUROPEAN FOLK MEDICINE COMPARE WITH NATIVE N. AMERICAN FOLK MEDICINE?

Answer 12

the Europeans that they had a similar view to the natives. things they share:
-spirituality, superstitions, folklore.

Question 13

Why was virgin soil epidemics so destructive to Natives?

what was different about their culture

Answer 13

They lived in small groups, were very mobile, community living, no notion of quarantine, panic, death of care-givers, demorilization, destruction of cosmology

Question 14

what are the three main factors contributing to the extent of epidemics for natives?

Answer 14

• immunological
• social
• psychological

Question 15

small settlements and groups, great settlement mobility and less individual mobility means what to natives when settlers come along?

Answer 15

more contact to few people means less likely to contact a greater number of disease, lowering their immune system.

Question 16

what were the three main Indian killer diseases, and why was it especially devastating to the native community?

Answer 16

smallpox, measles and influenza

• it targeted ages 15-40 which was the main work-force age. farmers, hunters
• a lot of people starved if disease hit a village hard

Question 17

what convinced the natives (hurons) that the Jesuits had a more powerful god? What prevented them from killing their priests?

Answer 17

• that the disease was the most powerful dark magic they had ever seen.
• if they kill the priests it might kill the fur trade.

Question 18

Why was dying of consumption associated with positive attributes?

Answer 18

heightened beauty, refined sensibility, artistic creativity

Question 19

when did going to the doctor become fashionable? what for?

Answer 19

19th century
-nervous disease, prostration, breakdowns.
Gout was a wealthy man disease.

Question 20

why was the romanticism of consumption a paradox?

Answer 20

b/c it was sexy for the wealthy/high class, but vilified for the low class. it was blamed on bad habits, bad conditions

Question 21

what were the pros and cons of consumption?

Answer 21

Pro: slow death. a lot of time to reflect, discuss, go on trips. make peace with your life. a brave and heroic death.
Cons: you are literally rotting from the inside out. Miasma- the smell is a pathogen. you reeked so you pass it on to people

Question 22

butchers and consumption

Answer 22

butchers rarely got the disease. It is believed because they come in close contact to animal disease with a similar mutation, so build up an immune