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Abstract
Academic interest and knowledge of folk healing have come a long way in the half century since Erwin Ackerknecht described “primitive medicine” as “primarily magico-religious, utilizing a few rational elements.”1 Through the studies of anthropologists, pharmacologists, health-related professionals, and a range of informed researchers, we today acknowledge the positive value of much traditional, folk, and alternative healing. Some of this healing exists in the realm of health and trust. Some involves the stimulation of endorphins. Some depends on biodynamic chemical properties of certain plants. These properties have long been acknowledged by pharmacological companies and university colleges of pharmacy, as the history of such vegetable drugs as digitalis, quinine, and curare illustrate.
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Erwin H. Ackerknecht,Medicine and Ethnology: Selected Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 21.
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See Alfredo López Austin,Textos de medicina Nahuatl (Mexico City: UNAM, 1967); Audrey Butt Colson, “Binary Opposition and the Treatment of Sickness among the Arawaio,” inSocial Anthropology and Medicine, ed. Joseph B. Loudon (New York: Academic Press, 1976), 422–99; George M. Foster, “On the Origin of Humoral Medicine in Latin America,”Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1 (1987): 355–93.
Jan Rogozinski,A Brief History of the Caribbean (New York: Facts on File, 1992), 18.
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Ibid., 1.
Ibid., 5.
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Ibid., 27.
Richard Harris,Local Herbs Used the Chinese Way (Woodbrook, Trinidad: Traditional Chinese Medical Center, 1991).
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See Murray and Alvarez; and Koss-Chioino,Women as Healers, Women as Patients (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992). See also Alan Harwood, “Mainland Puerto Ricans,” inEthnicity and Medical Care, ed. Alan Harwood (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 397–481.
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I am using “sacred” ritual in contrast to “secular” ritual as used in Brian M. du Toit,Drugs, Rituals, and Altered States of Consciousness (Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1977).
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Ibid., 112.
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See Robert O. Williams,The Useful and Ornamental Plants in Trinidad and Tobago (Port of Spain: n.p., 1951).
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Raul Cañizares,Cuban Santería: Walking with the Night (Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 1993), 77, 99.
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Phillip Singer et al., “Learning of Psychodynamics, History, and Diagnosis Management Therapy by a Kali Cult Indigenous Healer in Guiana,” inThe Realm of the Extra-Human: Agents and Audience, ed. Agehahanda Bharati (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), 345–69.
Phillip Singer et al., “Integration of Indigenous Healing Practices of the Kali Cult with Western Psychiatric Modalities in British Guiana,”Revista Interamericana de Psicología 1 (1967): 103–13.
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Gerald F. Murray, “Women in Perdition, Fertility Control in Haiti,” inCulture, Natality and Family Planning, ed. J. Marshall and S. Polgar (Chapel Hill: Carolina Population Center, 1976), 59–78.
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- Brian M. du Toit
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© 2001 Margarite Fernández Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert
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du Toit, B.M. (2001). Ethnomedical (Folk) Healing in the Caribbean. In: Olmos, M.F., Paravisini-Gebert, L. (eds) Healing Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07647-2_2
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