American Folk 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 1976.

In the first comprehensive exploration of the history and practice of folk medicine in the Appalachian region, Anthony Cavender melds folklore, medical anthropology, and Appalachian history and draws extensively on oral histories and archival sources from the nineteenth century to the present. He provides a complete tour of ailments and folk treatments organized by body systems, as well as information on medicinal plants, patent medicines, and magico-religious beliefs and practices. He investigates folk healers and their methods, profiling three living practitioners: an herbalist, a faith healer, and a Native American healer. The book also includes an appendix of botanicals and a glossary of folk medical terms. Demonstrating the ongoing interplay between mainstream scientific medicine and folk medicine, Cavender challenges the conventional view of southern Appalachia as an exceptional region isolated from outside contact. His thorough and accessible study reveals how Appalachian folk medicine encompasses such diverse and important influences as European and Native American culture and America's changing medical and health-care environment. In doing so, he offers a compelling representation of the cultural history of the region as seen through its health practices.

The practice of curanderismo, or Mexican American folk medicine, is part of a historically and culturally important health care system deeply rooted in native Mexican healing techniques. This is the first book to describe the practice from an insider's point of view, based on the authors' three-year apprenticeships with curanderos (healers). Robert T. Trotter and Juan Antonio Chavira present an intimate view of not only how curanderismo is practiced but also how it is learned and passed on as a healing tradition. By providing a better understanding of why curanderos continue to be in demand despite the lifesaving capabilities of modern medicine, this text will serve as an indispensable resource to health professionals who work within Mexican American communities, to students of transcultural medicine, and to urban ethnologists and medical anthropologists.

An in-depth study of traditional folk medicine in Vermont, written by a formally trained doctor. Folk medicine is an imperative aspect of many Vermonters’ lives and health. Trained medical doctor D. C. Jarvis set out to investigate this traditional approach to herbal medicine and produced this little guide to provide knowledge and understanding of the nature and long-successful uses of folk medicine. An invaluable read for anyone interested in daily increased vitality. The chapters featured in this volume include: - Vermont Environment and the Life Span - The Animal Laws - Your Beginning - Your Racial Pattern and Vermont Folk Medicine - The First Yardstick of Your Health - The Instincts of Childhood - Potassium and Its Uses - The Usefulness of Honey - The Usefulness of Kelp - The Importance of Iodine - Castor Oil and Corn Oil - Medical Reasoning Behind Vermont Folk Medicine

This practical and easy-to-understand guide to the plant wisdom of Southern and Appalachian folk medicine reveals the history and practices of this unique herbal tradition This book is the first to describe the history, folklore, assessment methods, and remedies of Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine—the only system of folk medicine, other than Native American, that developed in the United States. One of the system's last active practitioners, Phyllis D. Light has studied and worked with herbs, foods, and other healing techniques for more than thirty years. In everyday language, she explains how Southern and Appalachian Folk Medicine was passed down orally through the generations by herbalists and healers who cared for people in their communities with the natural tools on hand. Drawing from Greek, Native American, African, and British sources, this uniquely American folk medicine combines what is useful and practical from many traditions to create an energetic system that is coherent and valuable today.