Traditional folk beliefs on epilepsy in Norway and Sweden

The paper is the English translation with a new presentation (Twenty years after) of a paper published in Italian and Spanish in 1996. The aim of the paper was to explore the genealogy of the concept of folk-medicine, that at the end of 19th Century was employed to describe local popular practices about health, disease and care. The concept was developed in late 19th Century in Italy by authors like Zeno Zanetti and Giuseppe Pitrè. Pitrè's role was fondamental to establich mehodological and epistemological rules to describe and organize the research on popular practices and beliefs about health, diesease and ca

AM. Rivista della Società Italiana di Antropologia Medica, 2009

The focus in this chapter is on the relationship between illness experience, disease categories, social class and ethnic relations. More specifically the chapter argues that through the use of disease categories and illness stories patients-here especially from the lower social strata-situate themselves within their social environment in connection with categories as ethnicity and class. From 2004-2005 I carried out fieldwork in the south of Chile among patients, doctors and shamans-the so-called machis-of the Mapuche Indians. The Mapuche Indians are an ethnic minority with a population of 1.3 million people. They live in the south of Chile in reservations (comunidades) as well as in the capital Santiago. The medical practice of their shamans has been revitalized over the last decades and has become a very popular medical choice both among Mapuche Indians and other Chileans-especially near urban centres (BACIGALUPO A. M. 2001). In their medical work the machis normally diagnose on the basis of observing urine (willintun) and through entering trance state; the medical practice consists of a combination of rituals and herbal remedies. During my fieldwork I observed that in everyday conversation in Southern Chile knowledge and experience of illness and use of medicines-especially biomedicine and Mapuche medicine-were often-discussed topics among members of the family, neighbours and colleagues. Conversations about illness and medical practices frequently touched upon illnesses that involved symptoms with no apparent organic pathology. In particular, people shared stories of "strange" afflictions with quite similar symptoms: typically these were psychological symptoms like anxiety, lack of energy, loss of memory, constant desire to cry, combined with diffuse physical symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, swellings or intense pain, which most often were manifested in the head or stomach, but did also have a tendency to move location within the body. Some cases discussed, however, also 10-Kristensen.pmd 02/11/2010, 16.55 183 Dorthe Brogård Kristensen 184 AM 27-28. 2009 involved serious, and often terminal, diseases, which did have a biomedical diagnosis; the most common was cancer. These illness stories were, furthermore, accompanied by the complaint that the recent social changes and modernity hadn't brought much that was good, and many expressed a general feeling of being stuck in a rut without many opportunities to change the current social and economic situation. Others said they felt "crushed" and that they did not feel "alive". In addition, people complained of the cost of medical treatment, the long waiting for medical examinations as well as the failure of the medical doctors to detect a disease. A fundamental part of these stories was an evaluation of the medical diagnosis and treatment that the patients had received, from their medical doctor, as well as alternative practitioners. In Southern Chile indigenous disease categories are part of a general repertoire of folk knowledge. Here the distinction between, on the one hand, natural illness, such as colds, wounds, infections and flues, and on the other, spiritual (or supernatural) illness, reflects popular talk on health matters. To the latter category-spiritual illness-belong those types of afflictions, where an external agent, a spirit, ancestor or witch, is believed to have affected both the body of the patient, as well as his surroundings, causing physical, psychological and social unbalances. In the anthropological and biomedical literature the bodily afflictions described, which are diagnosed by patients and practitioners within an alternative or indigenous medical traditions, have been referred, to as "folk-illnesses", "idioms of distress" (NICHTER M. 1981) or "culture-bound syndromes" (SIMONS R.-HUGHES C. 1985). Locally they are referred to as "Mapuche-illnesses" or "spiritual illnesses", as alternative and Mapuche practitioners often explain illnesses through the Mapuche worldview, taking as a point of departure the belief in spiritual forces.

The nature of diseases in the traditional perceptions of the Mongolian peoples is an understudied phenomenon that requires an in-depth study. In the beliefs of the people of traditional culture any illness is seen as a divergence from a norm. It is a bad consequence of a human disturbance of the order of interaction between the world of men and the world of deities and spirits, and, as such, it is fixated in the language. Curing of a disease consisted in magical “correction” or elimination of the disturbance followed by magical practices and rites coupled with practical therapeutic methods.

BMJ, 1953

We may take it that disease of some kind has always afflicted man and must have led him to search for means of easing pain and curing disability. In his quest for *A Finlayson Memorial Lecture delivered before the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow on December 10, 1952. food he had to discriminate between things that were good for him and things that were not. By process of trial and error he obtained not only dietetic acumen but also knowledge of drugs which had a beneficial effect in disease, drugs, which prevented pain, and drugs which were capable of causing death. In course of time this skill in the use of drugs became the special province of certain individuals, and by it they were able to exercise power and authority in the community. These were the original medicine men, but it would be wrong to think that they relied on drugs alone in the treatment of disease. If the condition was simple or the cause of it apparent, no doubt such herbs or simples as were avail- able were used, together with primitive surgical pro- cedures, but we must remember that many disabilities have no obvious cause, and for the treatment of those other methods had to be devised.

Journal of the University of Manitoba Anthropology …, 2011

Serious illness which threatens mortality, does not respond to treatment, and has no obvious cause, elicits sensations of fear, bafflement, and helplessness in those who are affected. Through ethnographic case studies, it will be shown that these patterns cross cultural boundaries. At the same time, it will be demonstrated that the explanatory models for such illnesses exist within unique cultural settings. An understanding of the effects of such illnesses on human emotion, combined with a clear view of cultural context, is essential for any examination of these explanatory models.