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Popular medicine and empirics in Greece, 1900-1950: An oral history approach

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Violetta HionidouORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

Western literature has focused on medical plurality but also on the pervasive existence of quacks who managed to survive from at least the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Focal points of their practices have been their efforts at enrichment and their extensive advertising. In Greece, empirical, untrained healers in the first half of the twentieth century do not fit in with this picture. They did not ask for payment, although they did accept ‘gifts’; they did not advertise their practice; and they had fixed places of residence. Licensed physicians did not undertake a concerted attack against them, as happened in the West against the quacks, and neither did the state. In this paper, it is argued that both the protection offered by their localities to resident popular healers and the healers’ lack of demand for monetary payment were jointly responsible for the lack of prosecutions of popular healers. Moreover, the linking of popular medicine with ancient traditions, as put forward by influential folklore studies, also reduced the likelihood of an aggressive discourse against the popular healers. Although the Greek situation in the early twentieth century contrasts with the historiography on quacks, it is much more in line with that on wise women and cunning-folk. It is thus the identification of these groups of healers in Greece and elsewhere, mostly through the use of oral histories but also through folklore studies, that reveals a different story from that of the aggressive discourse of medical men against quacks.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Hionidou V

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Medical History

Year: 2016

Volume: 60

Issue: 4

Pages: 492-513

Print publication date: 01/10/2016

Online publication date: 15/09/2016

Acceptance date: 19/04/2016

Date deposited: 16/06/2016

ISSN (print): 0025-7273

ISSN (electronic): 2048-8343

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2016.57

DOI: 10.1017/mdh.2016.57


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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
056211Wellcome Trust
082800/B/07/LS/HHWellcome Trust
CHBICT930867EU

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