engleski

"If it didn't work it wouldn't be passed on" - traditional Medicinal Practices and medical pluralism in Isolated Island Communities in Croatia

In my presentation I will describe a case study on medical practices of one isolated community on the Island of Vis - one of the Croatian outermost open sea islands. It is an outline of my future PhD research which will be directed toward investigations of medical pluralism of the several island populations of Croatia. It is important to point out how so far, all research on the traditional concepts of health and sickness in the region of Southeastern Europe and thus in Croatia are in the form of descriptive ethnographies of mainly exotic healing practices which in their interpretations put a strong accent on mythological background and tended to completely disregard all biological, sociological, status, gender or other cultural aspects. Distanced from the mainland, every island, in a way, is a world in itself, surrounded and exposed to the tidings of environment and social history. This statement is probably no truer than for around 1100 islands of the Croatian coastline of Adriatic sea. Some of them, like Island of Vis, have revealed traces of human living which date back to 6000 BC. Thus, each island together with its people tells us a very special story imbued with layers of various Mediterranean cultures. Although there have been many demographic, genetic, folklore, linguistic and other studies of this diverse and peculiar island communities, there have been hardly any dealings with cultural aspects of healing and sickness. Therefore, the purpose of my research if roughly twofold: to uncover and interpret some of the specificities of traditional and present day medical practices connected with island populations and the second one is to point out and hopefully attend to the health care needs of today communities on these Islands which have been suffering greatly from depopulation over the last century for a number of economic and political reasons. The main goal of this preliminary investigation of the Island of Vis was to get the broadest overview of medical issues which informants carry as reminiscences of their own cultural tradition. Therefore open group interviews were conducted with a group of informants all coming from a small fishing village of Komiža on the Island of Vis. The results of transcript interpretation revealed plurality of medical practices on the all three levels of analysis: individual and social body and body politics. The differences in individual understandings and presentation of healing practices could mainly be connected with age and the level of education of particular informant. Family and traditional modes of healing played and still play the most important part in health provision on the Island together with biomedical health care which exists only of a recent date on the Island. Along with that, the informants confirmed the existence of several traditional healers and even heterodox practitioners like biomedical general practitioner or pharmacist practicing some forms of traditional medicine (herbalism, bone setting, etc.) There are also indications of different healing practices and procedures used by fishermen while they were out on the sea. Other than obvious traditional and biomedical body politics the interview with an older informant indicated the possibility of deeper layers from the past which could possibly be attached to catholic and/or socialist ideologies. Analyses of the particular procedures and recipes which pervaded all transcripts offered some insight into the traditional view on body and it’ s functioning. Interestingly enough, the key role in traditional recipes was not so much played by aromatic and healing herbs which are abundant on the island, but by readily accessible liquids like olive oil, vinegar, milk, urine etc. Moreover, many of such concoctions and practices are far from even remote biomedical approval, but even informants with higher education revealed a key to understanding of their relationship with traditional medicine: “ If it didn’ t work, it wouldn’ t be passed on”

traditional medical practices; medical pluralism; isolated communities; Croatia

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