Folk medicine .. a myth or a culture that requires testing and revision ?

Folk medicine is the set of inherited recipes for the treatment of pain and the prevention of diseases, whether by taking certain doses of edible ingredients, applying topical substances to parts of the body, or following certain practices in daily life (for example, using heavy blankets to sweat during sleep and recovering from colds), and this type of practice is called by many names such as “traditional medicine”, “complementary medicine”, “alternative medicine” or “indigenous medicine”, and it also includes the oral heritage of treatments in which the use of pharmaceutical preparations is absent, and it includes Acupuncture, herbalism and massage, defined by the World Health Organization as: “the sum total of knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, and used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness [1] It is contrasted with “modern medicine”, which is medicine that is taught in universities, and has experimental and theoretical scientific bases and clear explanations - unlike popular ones - and doctors are obligated to apply it in accordance with work charters.

Folk medicine is considered a cultural product that is similar to stories, proverbs and rhymes. It is a collective product of ideas and experiences. Therefore, we find it under study by anthropologists (anthropology) and in folklore books (popular culture). In the fifties, medical anthropology emerged as one of the branches of anthropology concerned with health and culture relations. To investigate topics, including people's interpretation of disease and treatment, and their reception of new diseases and treatments.

 Like any cultural product, this medicine develops in an upward manner, so some of its practices continue and their details increase, while the neglected ones remain in the lower classes of culture[2]. It includes massaging the scalp with wool and then with garlic, a recipe that continued and moved towards the distinctive upper layer of folk medicine, and is still used and known. Many people, and the reason for this movement - whether the rise and spread or decline and decline - is mainly the difference in lifestyles, as the breeding of domestic birds is no longer common among the people of the city as was the case in the past, and therefore the human interaction with the bird decreased, to become surprisingly reliant on its droppings Within a recipe, and even in the absence of surprise, it has become difficult to obtain this ingredient for the recipe. On the other hand, the recipe for garlic and wool is still within the reach of modern humans. We may add to this its effectiveness that bears a scientific explanation. The process of massaging with a rough body is like garlic. It opens the pores of the scalp, to receive garlic, which includes a package of vitamins - such as vitamin C and B6 and minerals that promote hair growth. [3]

Post - internet folk medicine

After the spread of the use of the Internet and the emergence of social networking sites, it became easy to circulate the practices of folk medicine to achieve further spread, whether by including them in the content created by users of these networks from text publications and video blogging, or by making them available on dedicated sites, and these networks opened the way To create content based on traditional medicine, it becomes - after a while - the circulation of inherited recipes is not enough, and content creators on social networks begin to create new “remedies” on the sidelines of traditional medicine.

These new treatments and spread on social networking sites - unlike traditional folk medicine - do not gain the credibility of the experience or effectiveness, but bloggers tend to install recipes that are first: different and surprising, so that they attract views, and second: they depend on the already available household ingredients, even if they are Non-herbal, for example, there is a video of the manufacture of a cream consisting of a mixture of soap, a soft drink and starch, which the owner of the recipe puts forward as it eliminates the darkening of dark places on the body, and another cream of mixing moisturizing Vaseline with analgesic aspirin tablets is supposed to lead to lightening and unifying the color of the face .

Third: the cost of making the recipe is low, and fourth: the recipe is consistent with current events and common keywords can be included in it. For example, we find a (mask mask) for the face, which is a skin mask made of ground chickpeas based on an inherited recipe for facial exfoliation, but the new thing you are offering is to cover the majority of Face with a medical mask for 20 minutes while applying the mixture, thus creating content for a word commonly searched for on this social network, resulting in its content with more views.

In his book (Medical Anthropology.. Theoretical Studies and Field Research), the anthropologist Ali Al-Makawi identifies the elements of low cost and access in a humane framework for the recipient among the reasons why people resort to treatments from folk medicine, especially with the low income of individuals, and while many practitioners of modern medicine neglect the background According to Makawi, we find the blogger giving an introduction to his suffering from the condition or disease for which the prescription offers a solution, which makes the viewer feel sympathetic, and “Irons” is also included among the reasons for the intractability of treating chronic diseases, thus the sufferers and their families seek any glimmer Hope leads to recovery

It appears from the first moment that modern medicine abolishes folk medicine, or that it is the first to follow that which is based on inheritances in which the right is mixed with the wrong, which creates a degree of opposition from the proponents of science to folk medicine. Modern medicine) Maryam Al-Ansari considers that “the attraction between the two types of popular and official treatment is nothing but a reflection of the diversity of the socio-cultural construction that stems from several dichotomies of the socio-cultural construction of society, including: (urban / rural), (rich / poor), (intellectuals / common people” )” [8].

However, taking a position on folk medicine remains a thorny issue, as it overlaps with the concepts of social authenticity and religiosity. In her research (the culture of folk medicine), doctoral student Najat Nasser concluded that the cultural factors that explain patients’ resort to folk medicine for medicine are: the connection of folk medicine with religion, Which “gave him a kind of sanctity, in addition to the belief in the efficacy and effectiveness of folk medicine in treating diseases,” and the connection of folk medicine with popular culture, which makes resorting to it a manifestation of cultural authenticity and connection to society[9], that is, when you take one of the recipes of traditional medicine, it enhances your connection The environment in which you live and its culture, while some may see that rejecting this practice as an objection to your social culture.

This link between folk medicine, culture, heritage, and religion in many cases, makes resisting it a matter fraught with dangers of opposition and even social rejection of opponents, and the novel (The Lamp of Umm Hashem) by the Egyptian writer Yahya Haqqi presents this model, so Ismail destroys the lantern that hangs next to the shrine of Sayyida Zainab in Cairo After his return from a mission to study medicine in Germany and his discovery that the common people use the oil of this lamp for medicine, which leads to the deterioration of their health, Ismail’s destruction of the lamp was a symbol of the physician scientist’s rebellion against popular myths related to health and medicine, especially as it does not benefit them, on the contrary, he lost his fiancée Her eyesight is due to the dripping of oil in her eyes, but as much as destroying the lamp was a rejection of superstition, it was - at the same time - a challenge to popular culture. Rather, the people of the neighborhood interpreted it as a rejection of religion and a disregard for the sanctity of the jellyfish oil that he gained from his presence next to the shrine, and the social rejection of Ismail is manifested in his departure About his area and the closure of his clinic due to the public boycott of him, and Ismail does not succeed in performing his medical role and reopening the clinic until after reconciling between “myth” and science, so he claims that the treatment he provides them is derived from oil The jellyfish.

Investigation before rejection

While Ismail's resistance - in (Qandil Umm Hashim) - to folk medicine stemmed from the negative effects that he found for his use of medicine, some may reject the idea of ​​using this medicine entirely, which exposes the refusing doctor to lack of social acceptance, but it is also wasted on him and on patients. The opportunity to use simple and effective treatments, we cannot judge the practices of traditional medicine until after studying and evaluating them, so that the doctor knows these treatments and studies them to determine the extent of their effectiveness, and then finds an explanation for this effectiveness or not, which is what actually happened in 1985 when the American doctor Clinton de Frost Jarvis published His book (Folk Medicine: A Doctor's Study of the Secrets of Nature)[10] which sold more than a million copies in the United States at the time of its publication, and after being reprinted in England, the author lists the summary of his testing of folk remedies he met while working as a doctor over the course of 50 years, most of them It was in rural areas, and Jarvis scientifically tested many of these recipes to come up with a set of effective folk medicine practices - common in Vermont in particular - that have a scientific basis and are medically valid, and the American doctor discussed the results of his tests of these practices with many He has seen a number of doctors in his country, to include it in his book and explain the medical reasons for its effectiveness.

But the first step for this, the step of achieving the medical folklore, seems to be the most difficult. In 2019, the World Health Organization published the results of a survey conducted on 113 countries of its members about the difficulties they face in regulating or criminalizing the practice of folk medicine. The lack of information topped these challenges by 99 percent. percent, followed by the lack of financial support for research related to this type of (traditional) medicine by 86 percent, and then the absence of mechanisms to monitor the validity of products related to this medicine, including herbal medicines by 75 percent.

In the end, traditional or folk medicine has the power of spread and influence, as it is part of culture, so it is worth taking advantage of that by refining and merging it with modern medicine, and today there are a number of scientific degrees in folk and complementary medicine and plant therapy in a number of European countries beside China, Malaysia and the states In addition to establishing prestigious medical entities specialized in folk medicine, for example: the Canadian Herbal Healing Association[12] and the American Herbalists Association[13], and institutes were established in some countries to study traditional medicine until That is outside its cultural heritage, for example, in British Columbia, Canada, the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncture Healers[14] and ministries of complementary medicine in many countries, including India and China.