Popular medicine: the origins

Popular medicine considers the body, psyche and behaviour of the individual as indivisible. The Greek word pharmakon meant a remedy for both the body and spirit. A pharmakon was also an incantation or spell and even music and poetry were thought of as pharmaka for the spirit. An illness is viewed as something extraneous to man, therefore we cannot control it, just eliminate it, for example, bacteria and viruses are now seen as causes of sickness but in popular medicine they were the sickness itself. All the theories existing in popular medical practice are based on experience. The remedies prepared using medicinal plants have been known since prehistory and they were generally prepared by women.

While women were busy providing sustenance to the community by gathering plant roots and fruit, men were out hunting and fishing. Women therefore acquired a vast body of plant-related knowledge that was handed down from mother to daughter, and what remains of this today is conserved by individual communities and is brought together in plant-related practices.
For cures women first implemented household remedies but when these proved ineffective they would turn to "experts", that is to say magical healers, sorcerers and wizards who healed through the use of rituals, charms and prayers. True healers had special characteristics, for instance, they were seven-month babies or the mothers of twins, or they came from families that were traditionally linked with magic and the ability to heal. Such figures are still evident in some rural communities. Popular medicine survived the establishment of official medicine at the start of the thirteenth century and the use of herbal medicines continued for many centuries.