led to excessive heat/cold, moistness/dryness in the body. Cures required the
ingestion of foods, liquids or herbs that had hot/cold, wet/dry properties,
which counteracted the identified imbalance, or methods such as bleeding,
which reduced humoral excesses. In European popular culture people did not
necessarily conceptualise health in humoral terms, but their practices and aeti-
ologies were based on the theory as much as legitimatised medicine. Once the
European medical community had rejected it by the end of the eighteenth
century, however, its continued influence became a marker of scientific back-
wardness. But we need to be careful. We should not label folk medicine as
merely the rump of outmoded medical ideas. In its myriad manifestations it
had its own distinct identity in local, regional and national contexts.
Influence of religion
Many aspects of folk medicine were and are inseparable from popular or
practical religion. The sacrament of ordination was thought to imbue the
Catholic priesthood with the healing power of God’s grace, while in Protes-
tant communities ministers and pastors continued to play an important role
as healers, using prayer and their literary knowledge of medicine. Jewish Folk
Medicine is covered in Chapter 11. The Bible was a source of personal spiri-
tual and physical succour, a prophylactic against illness, and the source of
numerous written and oral healing charms. In Catholic communities sacra-
mentals, holy water, blessed herbs, crosses, rosaries and relics had powerful
healing properties, and continue to be employed by millions in Europe today.
Take, for example, the Loretokindtradition in Switzerland, which concerns
a small ivory figure of the infant Jesus displayed in the Capucin convent in
Salzburg. Large numbers of replicas and pictures are consecrated by touching
them against the original, and then sold at the convent or via mail order
along with a blessing prayer. The image or replica is placed on the head or
the spot on the body that hurts while reciting the accompanying blessing.^13
In Catholic and Orthodox Europe pilgrimage is an essential aspect of the
role of faith in healing strategies. A major survey conducted in the 1980s
found that over 6000 shrines in western Europe were still active pilgrimage
sites.^14 Many pilgrimages were orchestrated and managed by the clergy, but
many others were generated by the lay community and largely autonomous
from the churches. To give just one example of the many that could be cited,
in Croatia there has been a long history of worshipping St Lucia to cure eye
complaints. Fifty years ago, people flocked to a house in the Istrian penin-
sula in Croatia where a gold ring with an image of St Lucia was kept. Its
guardian closed the eyelids of patients and made the sign of the cross over
them three times with the ring, which had been dipped in consecrated water.
In the region today people with eye problems still make vows to St Lucia on
her feast day.^15
Traditional European folk medicine | 29