Healing Logics

Culture and Medicine in Modern Health Belief Systems

Erika Brady

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780874214543
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Scholars in folklore and anthropology are more directly involved in various aspects of medicine—such as medical education, clinical pastoral care, and negotiation of transcultural issues—than ever before. Old models of investigation that artificially isolated "folk medicine, " "complementary and alternative medicine, " and "biomedicine" as mutually exclusive have proven too limited in exploring the real-life complexities of health belief systems as they observably exist and are applied by contemporary Americans. Recent research strongly suggests that individuals construct their health belief systmes from diverse sources of authority, including community and ethnic tradition, education, spiritual beliefs, personal experience, the influence of popular media, and perception of the goals and means of formal medicine. Healing Logics explores the diversity of these belief systems and how they interact—in competing, conflicting, and sometimes remarkably congruent ways. This book contains essays by leading scholars in the field and a comprehensive bibliography of folklore and medicine.

Bibliography

FOLKLORE AND MEDICINE

MICHAEL OWEN JONES AND ERIKA BRADY,
WITH JACOB OWEN AND CARA HOGLUND

Any bibliography treating a topic so complex, addressed in the literature of so many disciplines, must finally be a selective one. The criterion used in compiling this list has been the inclusion of representative works of greatest interest and utility to two groups of readers: cultural specialists (especially folklorists), and those in the healing professions. With these readers in mind, we have adapted the structure of the excellent bibliography found in Herbal and Magical Medicine, which should also be consulted (Kirkland et al. 1992, 197–233). As with this work, we have not attempted to cross-reference entries; the reader should check all categories pertinent to the topic. Unlike the previous bibliography, however, in those entries involving a practice common within a particular population we have given categorical priority to the community rather than the practice. In searching for information concerning African-American practice relating to childbirth, for example, the first place to look is 3B, then 1G for more general references on the topic, and possibly 4C for information concerning African origins. This choice was made to assist those in medical settings who are often called upon to address clinical issues relating to practice common within a specific population. We also suggest that the reader review the references cited in the articles included in this collection.

The ancillary areas of medical sociology and medical anthropology are merely touched on; the reader is encouraged to consult bibliographies available in the standard works in those fields. Researchers should also investigate the extensive and growing resources available electronically through the internet, which range from the biomedical mainstay MEDLINE to eccentric and highly individual web pages devoted to the most esoteric of healing practices.

The entries in this bibliography are included because they elucidate nonconventional health practice within cultural systems of belief. Readers interested solely in scientifically supported data concerning pharmaceutical efficacy or potential negative interaction with conventional treatment should investigate sources such as Mark Blumenthal’s compendium, The Complete German Commission E Monographs (Austin Texas: American Botanical Council; Boston: Integrative Medicine Communications, 1998) or The Physicians Desk Reference for Herbal Medicines (Montvale, NJ: Medical Economics Company, 2000), or the online database NAPRALERT.

The references found in this bibliography were compiled by Michael Owen Jones. Erika Brady was responsible for their organization into the present format, with the assistance of Jacob Owen and Cara Hoglund.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OUTLINE

I. Traditional and alternative beliefs and practices

A. Ethnobotany and herbalism

B. Magic, witchcraft, shamanism, and charms

(a) Practitioners

(b) Practices

C. Religious healing in Vodou, Santería, Lucumí, Candomblé, Spiritism, and Spiritualism

D. General religious and faith healing

E. Psychosomatic conditions and hypnosis

F. Ethnopsychiatry, psychotherapy, and symbolic healing

G. Menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and children, and midwifery

H. Home remedies, popular beliefs, and superstitions

I. Evil eye

J. Burn healing, blood stopping, wart healing, and thrash cures

K. Metaphor, narrative, and ritual

L. Powwow

M. Veterinary healing practices

N. Geophagy

O. Homeopathy and holistic healing

II. North American folk medicine: Regional variations

A. Southwestern

B. Northeastern

C. Southern

D. Midwestern

E. Western

F. Urban

III. Ethnomedical traditions in North America

A. American Indian

B. African, African American, Afro-Caribbean

C. Hispanic or Latino

D. Pennsylvania German

E. Asian American

F. Canadian

IV. World ethnomedical traditions

A. Latin American

B. Caribbean

C. African

D. Asian

E. British

F. European

G. Judaic and biblical

V. History of medicine

VI. General studies

VII. “Quackery”

VIII. Specific pathologies

BIBLIOGRAPHIC LISTINGS

I. Traditional and alternative beliefs and practices

I.A. Ethnobotany and herbalism

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Bergen, Fanny D. 1892. Some bits of plant lore. Journal of American Folklore 5: 19–22.

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Berman, Alex. 1956. A striving for scientific respectability: Some American botanics and the nineteenth century plant materia medica. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 30 (1): 7–31.

Browner, Carole H. 1985. Criteria for selecting herbal remedies. Ethnology 24: 13–32.

Campa, Arthur L. 1950. Some herbs and plants of early California. Western Folklore 9: 338–47.

Castleman, Michael. 1995. The healing herbs: The ultimate guide to the curative power of nature’s medicines. New York: Bantam Books.

Chiej, Roberto. 1984. The Macdonald encyclopedia of medicinal plants. London: Macdonald.

Crellin, John K., and J. Philpott. 1990. Herbal medicine past and present. 2 vols. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Croom, Edward M. 1983. Documenting and evaluating herbal remedies. Economic Botany 37: 13–27.

de Laszlo, Henry, and Paul S. Henshaw. 1954. Plant materials used by primitive peoples to affect fertility. Science 119: 626–30.

Dixon, Royal, and Raymond Comstock. 1914. Wicked or irreligious plants and their superstitions. Part 2 of The folk-lore of plants. Trend 8 (1): 124–27.

Duke, James. 1995. Assessment of plants as medicines: A tale of two tales. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 1 (1): 9–13.

Etkin, Nina L. 1988. Ethnopharmacology: Biobehavioral approaches in the anthropological study of indigenous medicines. Annual Review of Anthropology 17: 23–42.

———. 1993. Anthropological methods in ethnopharmacology. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 38: 93–104.

Farnsworth, Norman R., Akerel Olayiwola, Audry S. Bingel, Djaja D. Soejarto, and Zhengang Guo. 1985. Medicinal plants in therapeutics. World Health Organization Bulletin 63 (6): 965–81.

Feil, Harold. 1957. Story of the foxglove. Bulletin of the Cleveland Medical Library 4 (4): 59–64.

Fletcher, Robert, M.D. 1896. The witches’ pharmacopoeia. Bulletin, Johns Hopkins Hospital 7 (65): 147–56.

Foote, John, M.D. 1916. Trees in medicine. American Forestry 22: 648–53.

Gibbs, R. D. 1974. Chemotaxonomy of flowering plants. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Grieve, Maud. [1931] 1971. A modern herbal: The medicinal, culinary, cosmetic, and economic properties. In Cultivation and folk-lore of herbs, grasses, fungi, shrubs, and trees with all their modern scientific uses. 2 vols. New York: Dover.

Harborne, Jeffrey B., and H. Baxter, eds. 1993. Phytochemical dictionary: A handbook of bioactive compounds from plants. London and Washington, D.C.: Taylor and Francis.

Hoffman, F. A., and D. Eskinazi. 1995. NIH Office of Alternative Medicine Conference: Federal agencies explore the potential role of botanicals in U.S. health care. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 1 (3): 303–8.

Houghton, Peter J. 1995. The role of plants in traditional medicine and current therapy. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 1: 131–43.

Hung, O. L., R. D. Shih, W. K. Chiang, L. S. Nelson, R. S. Hoffman, and L. R. Goldfrank. 1997. Herbal preparation use among urban emergency department patients. Academic Emergency Medicine 4 (3): 209–13.

Jagendorf, Moritz A. 1962. Apples in life and lore. New York Folklore Quarterly 18: 273–83.

James, R. R. 1928. Ophthalmic leechdoms. British Journal of Ophthalmology 12: 401–10.

Kirkland, James, Holly F. Mathews, C. W. Sullivan III, and Karen Baldwin, eds. 1992. Herbal and magical medicine: Traditional healing today. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press.

Kowalchik, Claire, and William H. Hylton, eds. 1987. Rodale’s illustrated encyclopedia of herbs. Emmaus, Pennsylvania: Rodale.

Kreig, Margaret. 1966. Green medicine. New York: Bantam.

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