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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 d...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468812/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26048412 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-015-0037-z |
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author | Romeo, Nelide Gallo, Olivier Tagarelli, Giuseppe |
author_facet | Romeo, Nelide Gallo, Olivier Tagarelli, Giuseppe |
author_sort | Romeo, Nelide |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. RESULTS: This approach lead to the unearthing of heterogeneous healing methods that have been divided into different categories: Saints, Pilgrimages, Holy Water/Blessed Oil, Blessings, Religious Objects, Contact, Signs, Formulas and The Religious Calendar. Some of these practices, partly still performed in Italy, are a part of the landscape of the official Catholic Church, others come out of a process of syncretism between the Catholic Religion, the magic world and pre-Christian rituals. CONCLUSIONS: The vastus corpus of religious remedies, highlighted in the present work, shows the need for spirituality of the sick and represent a symbolic framework, that works as a filter, mediates, containing the pain that constantly fills everyone’s lives in remote ages even in the third millennium. All of this confirms how important the health-workers know and interpret these existential needs from anthropological and psychological points of view. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4468812 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-44688122015-06-17 From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) Romeo, Nelide Gallo, Olivier Tagarelli, Giuseppe J Ethnobiol Ethnomed Research 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. RESULTS: This approach lead to the unearthing of heterogeneous healing methods that have been divided into different categories: Saints, Pilgrimages, Holy Water/Blessed Oil, Blessings, Religious Objects, Contact, Signs, Formulas and The Religious Calendar. Some of these practices, partly still performed in Italy, are a part of the landscape of the official Catholic Church, others come out of a process of syncretism between the Catholic Religion, the magic world and pre-Christian rituals. CONCLUSIONS: The vastus corpus of religious remedies, highlighted in the present work, shows the need for spirituality of the sick and represent a symbolic framework, that works as a filter, mediates, containing the pain that constantly fills everyone’s lives in remote ages even in the third millennium. All of this confirms how important the health-workers know and interpret these existential needs from anthropological and psychological points of view. BioMed Central 2015-06-06 /pmc/articles/PMC4468812/ /pubmed/26048412 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-015-0037-z Text en © Romeo et al. 2015 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Romeo, Nelide Gallo, Olivier Tagarelli, Giuseppe From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) |
title | From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) |
title_full | From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) |
title_fullStr | From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) |
title_full_unstemmed | From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) |
title_short | From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine (XIX-XX century) |
title_sort | from disease to holiness: religious-based health remedies of italian folk medicine (xix-xx century) |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4468812/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26048412 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13002-015-0037-z |
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