Diferencia entre revisiones de «Resumen Medicina popular en vasconia/en»

Revisión del 15:25 6 feb 2019

Popular Medicine in Vasconia is the result of ethnographic research done by a number of Etniker Euskalerria groups under the direction of Ander Manterola. This latest volume is the sixth contribution to the Ethnographical Atlas designed and commenced by José Miguel de Barandiaran. Volumes published to date are Home Food (1990, republished in 1999), Children’s Games (1993), Funeral Rites (1995), Rites from Birth to Marriage (1998) and Cattle and Sheep Farming (2000).

Like the other contributions planned for the Ethnographical Atlas, all six books published to date take a detailed look at different aspects of life in Vasconia. The work as a whole is designed to study traditional culture as recorded in the 20th century and the changes affecting it in that period.

Fieldwork was carried out in Vasconia, a region of Western Europe straddling the French and Spanish Pyrenees between the river Adour to the north and the Ebro to the south. Two administrations in the area are part of the Spanish state system (the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country and the neighbouring Charter Community of Navarra) and the other is part of the French Pyrénées Atlantiques département. Measuring some 20,531 square kilometres, Vasconia has a population of 2,900,728 (the 1999 census for French Vasconia and the 2001 census for Spanish Vasconia).

In all, fieldwork covered fifty-eight towns and villages in the Spanish provinces of Álava, Vizcaya, Guipúzcoa and Navarra, and the areas of Bas-Navarre, Lapurdi and Zuberoa on the northern side of the Pyrenees. The main criterion governing the choice of places to be surveyed was the regional diversity of the target territory and the kind of zones (rural, urban and coastal) to be found there. The ethnographical survey comes from the Guide for an ethnographical survey (Chap. 2. Domestic Group Customs) published by Barandiaran in 1974 and corresponds specifically to the questions referring to Illness and Medicine (questions 46 to 170).

Prepared and written up at the Ethnography Department of the Labayru Institute, the volume is based on the information obtained from the fieldwork. The material collected is ordered and displayed in accordance with the conception people have of the human body, their interpretations of illnesses and disorders and the general importance given to health and sickness.

The analysis of popular reactions to disease and illness begins with the head, continues with the skin, internal organs and arms and legs. Disorders and anomalies of the reproductive cycle, children’s ailments and popular medicine are dealt with separately.

Popular Medicine in Vasconia’s opening chapters explain the way people understood the body and its environment and the symptoms and the general remedies applied when high temperatures and fever indicated that something was wrong. Also dealt with are transpiration and massages as the initial remedy for aching joints and muscles and respiratory problems. Space is also given to folk medicine, alternative medicines to allopathy, resorted to above all in fractures and dislocations, and the medicines kept at home.

Head, teeth, eyes and ears and the problems affecting them figure in the first four chapters of the work. Three long chapters deal with disorders of the skin, which undoubtedly has the most known remedies of any branch of popular medicine. The first of these deals with lesions and irritations, the second with infections and contagious diseases and the last with skin marks and blemishes, the hair and nails.

Un capítulo está dedicado a la sangre y los que se ocupan de los órganos internos están organizados en enfermedades respiratorias; estómago y tripas; e hígado, riñón y otras vísceras. De los huesos se ocupan dos capítulos, de dolencias reumáticas y lumbago el uno y de fracturas y luxaciones, el otro. Los apartados de las lesiones están divididos en heridas, hemorragias y extracción de espinas; mordeduras y picaduras, y la congelación, insolación, ahogamiento y caída de rayos. El capítulo de la reproducción se ocupa de los problemas de la menstruación, las dolencias de las lactantes, esterilidad y fertilidad y la menopausia. Otros dos capítulos están dedicados a las enfermedades infantiles. Se cierra la obra con dos capítulos que se ocupan de las creencias sobre las causas de algunas enfermedades con un tratamiento específico del aojamiento, y acerca de la salud y religión popular donde se estudian las costumbres en torno a ermitas y santuarios para preservar la salud y curar determinadas enfermedades.

Tanto este volumen como los anteriores cuentan con un capítulo introductorio que explica el proyecto y la metodología de la obra, los datos sobre el medio natural y humano, los datos geográficos de las localidades encuestadas, la bibliografía consultada e índices temático y analítico.