Table of contents:
- What are healers and greenery workers, and how the peasants treated medicine
- Hernia gnaws, illness from straining and cholera from "poisoned dew": how the people explained ailments
- Peasant diseases: scurvy, night blindness and headaches
- What does the disease look like, where it lives and what people talked to about
- Home treatments, puffing out an epidemic, how to scare a disease and how to calm a mentally ill
Video: How they were treated in Russia: What are greenery workers, why the disease was considered a sin and other little-known facts
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Today medicine is very well developed. People meticulously choose medical centers, read reviews about doctors, buy expensive effective medicines, can use information from the Internet, books, textbooks. In ancient Russia, everything was different. They were wary of medicine, and information about diseases was taken from the doctors and greenhouses. Read how, in the opinion of the peasants, the disease looked like, what they did to fight the epidemics, and who was to blame for the fact that the person went crazy.
What are healers and greenery workers, and how the peasants treated medicine
Initially, in the villages, the population was treated by the wise men. After the adoption of Christianity, medicinal plants were grown in the gardens of the monasteries, and the nuns looked after the sick. Gradually, the function of healing passed to the healers. Moreover, they healed not only the body, but also the soul. In medical books, herbalists and greenhouses (from the word potion), various methods of healing were described. In fact, these books can be called medical encyclopedias: they examined in detail the existing diseases, the structure of the human body, there were advice on proper nutrition, recommendations for massage.
In addition to really rational advice, methods were proposed to combat damage and the evil eye, since it was very often believed that it was they that caused disease. The peasants were not very loyal to medicine. There are various sayings that reflect this: "the pharmacy of the century takes away", "the soul that went to the doctors will not be alive." There were also various superstitions, for example, even in the 19th century, when medicine was already sufficiently developed, the peasants believed that illness was punishment for grave sins. And some of the healing methods used by healers today seem like a nightmare.
Hernia gnaws, illness from straining and cholera from "poisoned dew": how the people explained ailments
Ailments were popularly explained in different ways. For example, rheumatism, typhoid, fever, and pneumonia were considered a cold. They said that they arise from the cold, that the person is cold, his insides chill, and he has a cold. Therefore, the disease. When epidemics raged, a bad wind was called the culprit. It was he who brought the infection, from which whole villages fell ill. The dew also got it - the peasants believed that the cause of one of the cholera epidemics was precisely poisoned water, which fell in the form of dew on the fruits.
A number of diseases, in the opinion of the people, came from straining and appeared due to the lifting and movement of weights - the lower back could be taken away or they said that the worker was strained. Disorders of the intestines, pain in the stomach were also called strained. By the way, abdominal pain was called a hernia, that is, a sharp pain gnaws at the human body, as it were. The peasants referred to such vital processes as blood circulation and respiration as a secret that only God knows. If a person was in good health, was strong, they said that he was two-core, that is, blood flows not through one, but through two veins, giving him twice as much health and strength. It is clear that there was only a distant idea about the structure of the body and the organs located in it. For example, the people confused the location of the heart and stomach, and the cause of the headache was considered bad blood, trying to get rid of it with the help of bloodletting.
Peasant diseases: scurvy, night blindness and headaches
In ancient times, diseases were not explained by the actual causes of their occurrence. The peasants did not associate the cleanliness of their homes, quality food and water with diseases. The patients were not particularly looked after, the therapeutic diet was not followed. Infant mortality was high, due to low income and limited knowledge, which led to poor nutrition of the baby. For example, a baby could be given bread so that it grows faster, it was called choking the baby. When the baby was growing up, we begin to give him raw vegetables, kvass, which is completely unacceptable. Difficult living and working conditions also explained the large number of diseases among the adult population. The food was meager and monotonous.
The peasants rarely ate meat; the basic diet consisted of vegetables and bread. In winter, the families consumed supplies, and in the spring they ran out, and the peasants often suffered from night blindness and even scurvy. Modern medicine explains the appearance of these diseases by an insufficient amount of consumed vitamins. The peasant families were large, they all lived in one hut, in which they often kept pets. The houses were practically not ventilated. The old huts were severely frozen in the cold, people caught colds and were sick. While working in the field, when the sun was blazing in the sky, the peasants suffered from headaches. It seems that everything has its own reasons, but among the people of the disease found original explanations, mostly supernatural.
What does the disease look like, where it lives and what people talked to about
The people treated the disease as a living being. It was believed that she uses a person as a home and prevents him from living. They could talk to the disease, order them to leave forever, expect an answer from her. Fever, typhus and smallpox were "settled" in swamps or rivers, it was said that they could attack a person, suck all the strength out of him and go to another. And a fever is a few women, and each has its own goal: one deprives of appetite, another spoils the blood, the third sends insomnia, the fourth pulls the veins, and so on. There are versions of the origin of the word fever, namely, the disease is famously rejoicing at how it mocks a person. Fever was transmitted according to legends during kissing or flew into food in the form of a fly. As for the epidemics, they were sent by God for sins.
Sometimes diseases were represented not only by people but also by animals, for example, measles is a hedgehog, fever is a butterfly, smallpox is a toad. A person's stomach ached, which means that a snake has settled there. A man became a drunkard, which means he drank alcohol, in which the evil spirits put a poisoned worm. They said that household injuries were sent to people by evil spirits. The devil turned around like a horse and stepped on his foot, pushed, pointed the ax in the wrong direction - that's the injury. Uncleanness could confuse a person, and he was able to severely beat someone in such a state or even take his life. A lot of problems were explained by the tricks of the devil, including epilepsy and mental illness. It is the devil who has possessed, he is to blame, he must be expelled, and then the person will recover.
Home treatments, puffing out an epidemic, how to scare a disease and how to calm a mentally ill
In peasant families, they treated in their own way. There was a whole range of different means, for example, they could put a person on his stomach on a hot stove, rub his body with lard, radish, tar. If all else failed, the peasants went to the healer. The bath was considered the most important method of treatment. Both children and adults soared when they fell ill or were jinxed. Magical methods were also used. For example, if there were problems with the skin, it was necessary to draw a circle with the tip of a knife so that the rest of the skin did not suffer.
The plowing ritual was often performed. When epidemics broke out, a magic line was drawn in the villages so that the infection would not pass. A plow was used, in which widows or young girls had to harness themselves. Individual houses or even entire villages were plowed.
It was believed that the disease can be scared and it will run away. People shouted loudly, shot, and if a sick person lay behind the wall, they could hit it very hard or even hit the sick person. Used dousing with cold water, gave drink disgusting tasting drinks. All this was so that the disease could not recover from the fright and run away. As for mental illness, only clergymen could cope with them. It was believed that an evil spirit possessed the patient, that someone had jinxed him or that damage was induced. Special prayers were read over such patients in monasteries, they were taken near the miraculous icons. When a demon was cast out, it was necessary to shout out the name of the person who was suspected of corruption.
There was also a special attitude to childbirth, not only to diseases. And they found children in cabbage for a reason.
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