CHOROBY ŚMIERĆ UPRZEDZAJĄ (DISEASES PRECEDE DEATH), OR ON THE UNDERSTANDING OF DISEASE IN POLISH AND ITALIAN PROVERBS (16TH–20TH CENTURY) (original) (raw)
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Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Skłodowska. Sectio N - Educatio Nova, 2018
In the article, the author discusses the relationship that refers to people and illness that is recorded in various language data. Based on folk material, the author recalls, above all, folk magic formulas, called "orders". The magical healing ritual is perceived as a whole, in which the word accompanies certain activities taking place at a given time and place, using specific attributes. In a very specific existential situation, which is illness, the most basic mechanisms of thinking about the reality are revealed. Hence, the healing ritual reveals perceptions and judgements referring to illness, based on one's own body experiences. These judgements can be observed through specific materialization obtained through the language/text manifested in a specific executive situation. The analysis of linguistic/text data allows one to discover the significance of performed actions in the process of magical healing, as these actions complement the word. They are also strongly associated with beliefs about illness in general and they constitute a characteristic testimony of human struggle with illness.
Illness narratives in the esoteric vision of the world : Agnieszka Pilchowa’s views and concepts
2018
The question of the source and meaning of suffering is one of culture’s key issues and also arose within esoteric movements, where the response to it constituted an important element of the concept of the world accepted in such communities. In the Polish lands, these alternative currents gained enormous popularity during the interwar period.1 Wisła, a small town located in Silesia, became a special place on the esoteric map – a cross-over point for the influence of different nationalities and denominations.2 Among the many distinctive characters associated with this place, one especially prominent figure is Agnieszka Pilchowa, known as the “Clairvoyant of Wisła” (Jasnowidząca z Wisły).3 In her work, the problem of illness was particularly important because it occurred not only in the
Man and Illness: A Picture of Fight Recorded in the Word
Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Sklodowska, sectio N, Educatio Nova
In the article, the author discusses the relationship that refers to people and illness that is recorded in various language data. Based on folk material, the author recalls, above all, folk magic formulas, called "orders". The magical healing ritual is perceived as a whole, in which the word accompanies certain activities taking place at a given time and place, using specific attributes. In a very specific existential situation, which is illness, the most basic mechanisms of thinking about the reality are revealed. Hence, the healing ritual reveals perceptions and judgements referring to illness, based on one's own body experiences. These judgements can be observed through specific materialization obtained through the language/text manifested in a specific executive situation. The analysis of linguistic/text data allows one to discover the significance of performed actions in the process of magical healing, as these actions complement the word. They are also strongly associated with beliefs about illness in general and they constitute a characteristic testimony of human struggle with illness.
Studia Ceranea
The main points are related to the cultural-anthropological (Michel Foucault) and theological contextualization of diseases (Jean-Claude Larchet) and their treatment in the Middle Ages. Based on the South Slavonic hagiographic literature, the terms physician and healer are defined and specified. The study focuses on the mental disease (insanity), which according to the methodology of Larchet is three types: somatic nature of madness, the madness of demonic origin, and madness of spiritual origin. Also partly concerns the problem of God fools’ insanity.
Keywords: human being, possibility, illness, finiteness, philosophy of medicine, medical anthropology, Aristotle Abstract: The study investigates philosophically the issue of human illness and its organic pertinence to the meaning of human life starting from the recognition that the dangerous encounter with the experience of illness is an unavoidable – and as such crucial – experience of the life of any living being. As for us humans, there is probably no mortal man who has never suffered of some – any! – kind of disease from his birth to the end of his life… Illness is therefore an experience or outright a danger of existence and its possibility, as well as a way of being that nobody has ever been and will ever be ontologically or existentially exempted from. So, it may well be “arbitrary” or “accidental” which disease affects which being or person, when and to what degree, in what way, etc., but it is factually unavoidable that in the course of one’s entire life – from its very beginning to its very end – one would never fall ill in some respect. The paper discusses this issue by the ontological investigation of possibility.
Disease, Healing and Medical Knowledge in an Old Bulgarian Collection of Miracle Stories
Studia Ceranea, 2022
The Old Bulgarian hagiographical collection of miracle stories, named A Tale of the Iron Cross, is relatively well known among the scholars, but a sufficient number of its details still has not been studied properly. In fact, such a peculiarity seems somehow strange, especially if we take into consideration that the mixture of translated and original strata in the present Tale's version does not hinder its significance as a valuable primary source of historical information. There can be no doubt that the religious aspect in the hagiographical collection in question is the leading one in the foreground. On the other hand, however, the records of the daily life activities should not be underestimated either. Their presence within the frames of the Tale helps a lot in the scholars' attempts to reconstruct the knowledge, skills, habits or principles of social behaviour in the Bulgarian society in the late 9 th-early 10 th century.
From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century)
Background: The relationship between spirituality, religion and medicine has been recognized since antiquity. Despite large differences in their history, society, economy and cultures human communities shared a common belief that spirituality and religion played an important role in the healing of diseases. Methods: The study of religious remedies used by Italian folk medicine in order to treat diseases was based on a review of literature sources compiled between the late nineteenth century and the early to mid twentieth century.
Incantatio. An International Journal on Charms, Charmers and Charming, 2013
This article presents the initial stages and the planned further developments of a research on Hungarian curative charms against fright illness. Based on a rich and interesting database of healing and curative folk beliefs, rituals and texts, the research aims at exploring the charms and the charming rituals from the perspective of medical anthropology. The analysis is focused on the phenomenon of fright-illness (ijedtség) and its verbal magical treatment, on the basis of emic perceptions. While this research will develop and progress, the current article gives a general introduction to the Hungarian terminology on fright-illness in comparison to similar culture-bound syndromes in Central Europe, and also introduces the most prominent of the charms, in Hungarian with English translation.