Reflexiones acerca de la medicina popular

Abstract

Primitive medicine, empirical, takes from antiquity two different directions: the sorcery, and the rather scientific direction, which emerges into the present medicine. Practices of so called popular medicine, with its empirical and magic components, derive from the first direction. Three components represent the plot of the universal phenomenon of quackery: the quacker, the patien and the healing methods essential characteristics are explained and commented in this work. It also takes notes of the increasing loss of its traditional peculiarities, and of its position in favour of new resources which are in vogue. But, as long as there are diseases with a difficult treatment or incurable, quackery of any kind will survive, as an open door to hope.