alarming reality, particularly among the younger generations’. The oral repos-
itory of folk medicine is not being passed on.6,63Still, the impression is that the
cultural changes that have eroded oral transmission proceed more slowly in
Spain, or at least differently, so that the rump of traditional medicine remains
in better health than in Italy.^27 In Murcia, south-east Spain, ‘yerberos’or tradi-
tional herbalists continued to sell their herbs and medicines on certain market
days in the 1990s.^42 The importance of pastoral farming is probably an impor-
tant factor in influencing this pattern of continuance. A study of mountain
communities in Galicia in the 1990s found that traditional plant remedies
were primarily used by stockfarmers distrustful of veterinarians.^64
The magical aspects of folk medicine should also not be confined to the
past – a subject only for historians. In the 1980s French ethnographers
found ‘charming’ alive and well in Brittany and other parts of the country,^65
and it was also being practised in the farming communities of Lower
Saxony, Germany.^66 Closer to the present, fieldwork has shown that
charming is still employed in parts of Italy, and is a significant aspect of folk
medical provision in eastern Europe.4,32
This leads us to the question of why some aspects of folk healing
continue in Europe today. At this point it is important to stress the distinc-
tion between folk illnessand folk medicine.^67 Folk illness (concepts of cause,
aetiology and manifestation) usually requires folk medicine (concepts of
cure, practices and practitioners), but folk medicine can function independ-
ently, and has proved itself eminently adaptable to modern healthcare. Post-
war Norway developed one of the best healthcare systems in the world, but,
as research in the 1970s and 1980s shows, this by no means usurped some
folk medical therapies. In Norway layers-on of hands, religious healers and
herbalists continued to be consulted.68,69A survey of alternative medicine
uptake among inpatients at one German hospital in 2004 revealed that 13%
of the sample had used herbal remedies for their condition.^70 What has
happened, of course, is that during the twentieth century aspects of tradi-
tional European folk medicine have been redefined and gained widespread
acceptance as part of the package of complementary and alternative medi-
cines, which are now an integral part of healthcare in the contemporary
western world.
Old factors for the preservation of folk medical traditions, such as
geographical isolation, cost and the impotence of the ‘official’ alternative, are
no longer as relevant. That said, with regard to the last, numerous people
today continue to cope with incurable and terminal illnesses by resorting to
alternative therapies. The importance of print for understanding the history of
European folk medicine was highlighted earlier, and it needs to be stressed
again in relation to the continuance of folk tradition in our modern, highly
literate society. Although the oral tradition may be on the verge of extinction,
and with it the loss of much unrecorded local knowledge, more generalised
38 |Traditional medicine