Antall József szerk.: Népi gyógyítás Magyarországon / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 11-12. (Budapest, 1979)
TANULMÁNYOK - Hoppáy Mihály: „Anya és gyermek" a magyar folklórban — A hiedelemvilág etnoszemiotikai megközelítése (angol nyelven)
¡§¡. Hoppá : ,,Mother and Child " in Hungarian Folklore 91 of folk medicine we must utilize other sciences, such as linguistics, medical history, history of religion, and general culture history ". The complexity of ethnomedical phenomena also warrants the interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, over and beyond historical affinities, semiotics must reach out to ethnomedicine. 1 find R. Schenda's observation in his Volksmedizin—was ist das heute?, quite appropriate here: " Volksmedizin heute ist ein sehr verwickelter komplex von Meinungen, Einstellungen und Verhaltens weisen. . . ein Komplex der von einen ganzen Bündel von sozialen konflikten durchsetzt ist " (1973:209). One can expect that semiotics will eventually demonstrate how ethnomedicine is embedded in society, and how it functions within the larger context of culture. 2. A BRIEF SURVEY OF STUDIES The richness of Hungarian data on mother-child relationships makes the topic relatively easy to study. A work (in Hungarian and German) appeared at the end of the last century, entitled Volksbräuche und Aberglauben in der Pflege des Neugeborenen in Ungarn (Temesvárÿ 1900). This excellent work contains replies to questionnaires for midwives and 12 000 other data gathered by the author — now comprising an archive. Aside from a few additional tracts on certain geographic regions, the topic was all but forgotten shortly after the publication of Temesváry's work. Recently we began to prepare the encyclopedic work, Magyarság Néprajza (Ungarische Volkskunde). Under this project two excellent studies were written by M. Kapros (1974, 1977), which, in addition to dealing with the beliefs associated with child birth in a given region, gives an overview of the entire Hungarian ethnographic literature on the subject. (Further information can be found in Gunda 1954, Hoppá 1976A, Wlislocki 1893). A wealth of information can also be found at the archive of the Hungarian Ethnographic Museum. There was a wide-scale collection-project with the use of questionnaires in 1968 — 70. Approximately 20 000 data were gathered from roughly onefourth of all Hungarian villages on infant-mother relationship. My personal collection comprises several thousand data. The most intensive time period of my fieldwork fell between 1962 and 1967, and I still continue my investigation of the Zemplén-region. My data are mostly on memory-culture of one or two decades ago. 3. PEASANT MIDWIFERY IN HUNGARY Historical data reveal that the practice of midwifery was widely scattered in Hungary at the beginning of the 19th century (Penavin 1974:197). In the end of the 18th century official midwife training began, and books were in circulation on the subject— mostly foreign authors' works in Hungarian translation (Hoppá —Törő 1975:79). Due to the low standards of hygiene and the consequent high rate of infant mortality there was every reason to blame the woman assisting with birth for causing harm or various defect to the newborn. The midwife was capable of causing harm or healing equally (Gunda 1962:133). She was called to the dying and she assisted at births. Often she treated other illnesses (to the history of midwifery in revulutionary approach
