Antall József szerk.: Népi gyógyítás Magyarországon / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 11-12. (Budapest, 1979)
Antall József: Lecturis salutem
14 Comm. Hist. A rt is Med. Suppl. 11-12 (1979) right of existence had been proved from the viewpoints of science history, medical history, ethnography, cultural history, sociology, etc. as well as — though secondarily only — by the enlargment of the scale of drug stock and the rediscovery of certain pharmaceutical basic materials etc. And last but not least because of the unfortunate affection people bear for lay medicine, self-cure, quackery etc. for folk medicine must be split from these as a useful field of activity in a given stage of historical and social historical development. The present volume includes beside papers discussing the basic principles and methodological problems of ethnomedical research, those which discuss the most diverse questions of ethnobotanics, ethnotherapy as well as other relating papers and documentations of science historical or cultural historical interest. The papers published here are mostly of Hungarian interest or based on Hungarian folk research material, with two exceptions. One of them discusses the ethnomedical relations of our akins in language living in the region of river Ob, by a medical historian who lives and works in the vicinity of the given area. The other paper deals with folk medicine of Peruvian Indians written by a Hungarian ethnographer who had spent several years in South-America. We are pleased to have published the important work done in the Semmelweis Medical Historical Museum on the folk medical instruments to be found in Hungarian Museums. We believe that the survey of ethnomedical objects and documentation, the collection and publication of bibliographical data mean much help in the work of research. A lot of work has been done so far by the researchers of folk medicine, by doctors, pharmacists and ethnographers associated into the Hungarian Society of the History of Medicine. It well may be that the picture of ethnomedical research is unsatisfactory as yet; it is tinged by the diversity of the methods of natural and social sciences, of the viewpoints of medical history and ethnography, of expert researches and enthusiastic devotees. No one could deny, however, that the last decade has brought much improvement also in this field; the Hungarian researchers could contact with foreign collegųes, got acquainted with their research teams, organizations and journals. We have tried to give all the help in our power to the work and to the exposition of individual opinions, to allow place for the most varied papers respecting the authors' views even if we could not grant our approval or acceptance. The foreign reader will see that also when he reads the foreign language summaries chosen from the table of contents, it is the more simple in the case of the paper published in English. We want to forward our acknowledgements to the authors and lectors of the papers, as well as to the leaders and members of the folk medicine section who took part in the preparation of this volume. We hoped that the publication will meet with the approval of medical historians and ethnographers alike, and their opinion will be formed after real analysis and criticism and not after petty-minded, personal impulses as we often had to witness in forms of loud opinions, abusing remarks from the background, or lofty overlook and conspiracy of silence. József Antall
