title: Popular Medicine and Empirics in Greece, 1900-1950: An Oral History Approach.
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.
authors.affiliation: Newcastle University,School of History,Classics and Archaeology,Armstrong Building,Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU,UK.
authors.forename: Violetta
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Hionidou
mesh_terms: D005249:Fees and Charges / Q000266:history; D005495:Folklore / Q000266:history; D006115:Greece; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008007:Licensure, Medical / Q000266:history* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D008519:Medicine, Traditional / Q000191:economics / Q000266:history*; D011781:Quackery / Q000266:history
keywords: Greece; empirics; medicine; oral history; popular healing