Soc Sci. Med Vol 21, No . 3, pp . 319-325 . 1985 0277-9536185 $3 .

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Printed in Great Britain . All rights reserved Copyright ,- 1985 Pergamon Press Ltd

TRUST, TALK AND TOUCH IN BALKAN FOLK HEALING

BARBARA KEREWSKY-HALI'ERN
Department of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, U .S .A .

Abstract-Broadly based in long-term anthropological fieldwork in the Balkans (in Serbia, Macedonia
and Bulgaria) . this discussion of folk healing techniques illustrates how convergence in the
patient/practitioner relationship is of prime importance in effecting a positive outcome . $umadija in
central Serbia is selected as an example, and treatment for erysipelas . a common health problem which
villagers call 'the red wind', is described and analyzed . Against a sociocultural background in which the
collective wisdom of the past is retained and transmitted orally to contemporary healers, especially to the
bajaliea, or conjurer who heals with words, it is shown how shared communicative modes of trust, talk
and touch are essential to the ritual psychomancy by which the treatment 'works' . Also considered are
the ritual roles of women in this patriarchal society and peasants' perceptions of folk pharmacology as
being extraneous to the eventual cure . Connections between cultural responses and physiological responses
as manifested in the villages are suggested as counterparts of Western symptomatic treatments related to
behavior modification .

It has been said that biomedical models are designed village community or from the exigencies of peasant
to manage diseases, whereas ethnomedicine is mod- life . The practitioner is not a member of a privileged
eled on people who are ill . Probably there is some subset . There is no special training, other than being
truth to this generalization, but such a dichotomy of appropriate age and being a retentive and willing
may be partially unfair and incorrect . Some bio- aural recipient of centuries of orally transmitted
medical research is beginning to acknowledge re- collective wisdom . There are no constraints of
lationships between perceptions and body responses honorific hierarchical language ; with both parties
that folk practitioners have long 'known' . speaking the vernacular dialect of the Siokarski vari-
In order to look in depth at one side of the issue, ant of Serbo-Croatian, there are no barriers to com-
that is, to present a case study which documents munication . And since all the villages from which
effective health care delivery within the ethnomedical data for this discussion are drawn are part of a
model. this article examines treatment procedures in communist state which restricts activities in the pri-
a contemporary Balkan village . An example is se- vate sector, healing rituals are practiced discretely, if
lected from central Serbia [1] . Data are drawn from not clandestinely, and not in a public place . which
a cultural setting where pluralism in health care might attract attention and approbation .
delivery now is available, but it is significant to note In like manner, there is no economic differentiation
that most peasants (as well as some townspeople . all between practitioners and other villagers . If it turns
of whom have relatively easy access to medical out that there is some manifestation of overt material
facilities) usually select the folk way, performed in the difference, this may be due to special circumstances .
village, This makes a strong statement about vil- For example, a particular morning of research comes
lagers' attitudes toward healing techniques at a time to mind : two kerchiefed women, both with knee
when both biomedical and ethnomedical alternatives boots encased in mud, ploddingly guide a recalcitrant
are accessible . sow and her litter of squealing piglets along a muddy
lane . One of them, baba Zorka, is a healer, simulta-
neously explaining the preparation of balms and
poultices as she herds the pigs ; the other is the
CONVERGENCE IN BALKAN FOLK anthropologist . Progress, such as it is, is interrupted
HEALING
by a young man on a new motorbike, an admired
When carrying out ethnomedical investigation, rural status symbol . He brakes alongside us with a
degrees of divergence or convergence in the 'patient/ splendid arc of mud and asks, "Excuse me, Aunties,
practitioner relationship' or 'client/healer interaction' which of you is 'onoga Orasanka' (that woman from
are among the first features noted . In Balkan folk Ora'sac)?' He explains that he is acting as courier for
healing covergence is so apparent-i,e . the social gap a man from Garage, three villages or a half-day's
between the two participants is so small-as to render journey away by cow cart . He tells us that the
a conventional dyad is almost meaningless . This fact Gara'sanin is presently enroute to our village and sets
is of importance in developing explanatory ap- off in another spray of mud. (The announced patient
proaches based on shared modes of communicative had suffered a stroke during the night and arrived in
competences implementing mind and body response Orasac later that day .) [2]
interactions . Thus no geographical differentiation is made other
Villagers refer to one another as nroj sefjak (`my, than as means of introductory identification . Al-
fellow villager') . Being skilled as a folk practitioner though they may be separated by distance and
does not set the healer apart from the rest of the topography, participants are of the same culture . The
319
320 BARBARA KEREw 5KY-HALPERN
man from Garage was not called 'the outsider* .
Instead he was nag Garasanin ( our man from
Garage') . thereby incoporating him into the immedi-
ate collectivity of village society and local concerns .
As for differentiation due to physical condition, while
in Ora'sac ne was never referred to as 'the stroke
victim' or something similar. Such would not be
compatible with village ethos related to hospitality
and etiquette . Also, and surely of equal consid-
eration, the less differentiated appellation served to
deflect the evil eye . In peasant Southeast Europe in
the 1970s and '80s, this remains a significant concern .
For reasons detailed subsequently, those who pro-
vide health care are females . The practitioner (who
may be a grandmother, cooperative farm laborer or
herder in other aspects of her life) is referred to below
as 'she' . The patient may be male or female, of
course, but for pronominal clarity will be called 'he' .
Another necessary definition is 'traditional' . Here
traditional refers to folk practices or ethnomedicine,
as compared to biomedical procedures (3] .
Setting and social structure
Villages in the field sample are located in the region
of ~umadija . a gently rolling area which comprises
the heartland of Serbia, the largest of the six constit-
uent republics of Yugoslavia . Being an ethnic Serb
formerly assumed being a member of the Orthodox
Church, using the Cyrillic alphabet and participating
in a set of cultural features which have been eroding
at differing rates since the end of World War II and
the introduction of a socialist government . In the
early 1950s when fieldwork was initiated, a basic
reform was a limitation of ten hectares on all
private landholdings . This change affected few vil-
lagers since most peasant holdings in Sumadija were
less than this size . Industries began to be established
in nearby market towns, and many peasants opted
for employment in the social sector, thereby be-
coming peasant-workers . Paved roads, electricity,
easy access to medical facilities, increased literacy
progams and the appearance of television, which
opened windows on the wider world, all became part
of the village scene [4] .
Interestingly, other aspects of village life have been
less affected . A significant one among these is oral
tradition . Most villagers under age 50 now can read
with ease, but a viable and valued skill remains the
ability to transmit cultural inheritances in the form of
epic poems, proverbs, aphorisms, genealogies and
healing charms . The efficacy of oral charms for
healing is a main consideration in this article [5] .
Social structure, too, has changed relatively little .
Rural Serbia still can he characterized as a land which
is patriarchal, patrilineal and largely patrilocal . These
factors have direct relevance to a discussion of folk
healing. In this area it has always been men who have
controlled the ongoing cycles of secular and ritual
life, whether these deal with agricultural activites or
religious and other annual rites . Women are excluded
from such events except in prescribed female roles .
A widow with no grown son at home may he a
titular household head, but she is prohibited by
societal convention from hosting her household slava,
the ritual feast day honoring her affinal (husband's
family's) patron saint.
Women as mediators
Yet there appears to be an important and subtle
complementarity at work in the villages . The regu-
larized, cyclical activites of daily, seasonal and annual
agricultural life, as well as the ordered secular and
ritual cycles, continue to be performed by men .
However, there are certain aspects of life which can
be characterized as non-regularized and non-ordered .
Intervention in these is carried out exclusively by
women . They relate to women's skills as mediators
with the past, the future and the unknown [6] .
Communion with the past takes the form of ritual
lamenting for the dead [7] . Foretelling the future is
also the realm of women . Interceding with chthonic
forces that blow through caves and lurk under rocks
as bearers of diseases again is practiced by women .
Especially here, in serving as go-betweens with the
unknown, women are perceived in both their biolog-
ical and ritual roles as providers of sustenance and
comfort, as protectors and, ultimately, as healers .
On a symbolic level, village women are archetypal
mothers, a significant theme which resonates not only
throughout the rich but little-studied genre of healing
charms, but also throughout the ritual procedures for
various healing techniques .
While this complementary balance is acted out .
women in the village are viewed (by village men) as
mysterious, complex beings . polluting and dangerous
but nevertheless imbued with unique powers of
purification . For this reason a woman cannot engage
in healing practices until she herself is non-polluting,
i .e . ritually clean (very rarely pre-menstrual ; most
usually post-menopausal) [8] .
These circumstances are relevant to the writer's
temporarily stepping out of the impersonal role of
anthropologist and making a brief subjective detour .
The privilege of having lived considerable portions
of my adult life in Balkan villages imparts validity to
these observations . Over the course of three decades
of intermittent fieldwork recording changes in all
aspects of peasant life, quite naturally peasants have
taken account of changes in the observer as well .
Over time I have moved through their recognized
statuses of bride, woman, mother, matron and, lately,
old woman . A turning point in my investigation of
folk healing practices occurred a few years ago when
our eldest daughter, then a college student, came to
visit in the village . People who had known her since
early childhood and at stages as she grew to maturity
saw her that summer as rrela .'ripe', herself a grown
woman ready to bear children . Their perceptions of
her in turn elevated me to the status of baba, 'old
woman' or ritually clean female . all euphemisms for
presumably menopausal and therefore a safe and
suitable recipient of the kinds of secret knowledge I
had been trying for years to elicit without much
success . Since then I have been incorporated into the
informal sisterhood of village practitioners, an event
unmarked by ritual of its own but one which, by its
existence, makes my own understandings more sensi-
tive . Therefore, this documentation of Balkan folk
healing comes from the vantage point of a woman in
the village, and, in a sense, of the village . As a result,
the usual dyad, 'what the folk think'i'what the in-
vestigator thinks' may not be clearly marked . The
following observations are based on research on

Trust, talk and touch in Balkan folk healing
aspects of healing techniques used by four folk
practitioners in three villages .
PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE HEALING
RITE
How and why does folk healing work so
effectively? Shared expectations and shared behav-
ioral competences are key to eventual resolution .
Once a trust bond has been established, the commu-
nicative modes that bear the trust relationship along
convergent tracks are founded in talk and touch . A
focused look at these modes is demonstrated by
selecting a common health problem and by showing
how the communicative skills work in combination
with the healer's psychocultural and ancillary phar-
macological knowledge .
In Serbian villages and elsewhere in the Balkans a
health concern is erysipelas, known in Sumadija as
crieni velar, 'the red wind' . This designation places
erysipelas within an ancient system of folk taxonomy
in which external characteristics of an ailment are
color matched to perceived disease-bearing winds
which come from 'out there' in the unknown
world [9] .
Erysipelas is a streptococcal infection brought on
when bacteria invade an open wound or laceration .
This results in a reversal of the body tissues' own
healing mechanisms and causes a hard, hot and
painful red ring around the wound [10] . Peasants are
not concerned with medically-defined etiology ; their
implicit understanding of cause and effect has to do
with ill winds . Diagnosis is based on experience . The
incidence of erysipelas is frequent in villages, where
people work with sharp tool such as axes, scythes and
pitchforks . and with livestock at dawn, dusk and in
ill-lit barns amidst dung, mud and other accessories
of everyday rural life . Risk is increased by relatively
recently introduced occupational hazards such as
tractors . combines and other machinery with cutting
edges operating on topography better adapted to
beasts of burden than to mechanization . In its most
dangerous form 'the red wind' may progress to
gangrene, caused when blood no longer circulates
to diseased tissue and massive tissue death occurs .
(Amputations observed in the village, however, result
from wartime and other traumatic accidents and
not from removal of a gangrenous limb brought on
by an infected wound . This fact underlines the
effectiveness of folk cures for 'the red wind' ; when
treated appropriately, apparently it does not advance
to a dangerous stage [I I] .)
The trust bond
An individual afflicted with 'the red wind' seeks out
a hajalica . a conjurer who heals with words . There are
usually one or two within a few hours' walk from any
village . The ill person's relationship with the hajalica
is based on referral and reputation, and so a trust
relationship exists even before initial contact . As in
the anecdote described above, sometimes a messenger
is sent in advance, but usually an ill person simply
chooses a hajalica and shows up in her yard . For
her part the conjurer is extremely interested to learn
who 'sent' him . This represents neither economic
networking nor a conventional Western patient ;
321
practitioner relationship . Rather, it is an important
form of social bonding . Both parties spend time
getting to know one another, conversing about
mutual acquaintances and potential affinal ties, thus
exploring the possibility of an actual kin tie however
far removed, and, in any case, creating a viable social
link and a reaffirmation of the initial expression of
trust . The ill person, aware of the rules of ritual
psychomancy as part of a shared system of commu-
nicative competence, knows his part . He must he
prepared to halt his own afternoon activities for the
ritually prescribed three successive days (or, if too ill
to walk, to arrange for someone to transport him by
cart or car) and appear at the home of the bajalica
when the sun begins its downward journey on each
of these days [121 . For her part the conjurer makes an
equal time commitment, and thus the two establish a
treatment schedule reinforcing mutual trust . Baba
Zorka maintains that she must place greatest trust in
herself and appends modestly 'Prco bog, pa ja (First
God, then I)' .
Patient and practitioner may be cohorts . Even an
older patient often begins by addressing the bajalica
as Mother, an affirmation of his faith in her nur-
turance and care . As the days of ritual unfold, and as
the practitioner instills in the ill person a sense of his
own ability to help the process along, some patients
discard the need for a surrogate mother and percep-
tively shift part of the trust and responsibility to
themselves .
The setting is unremarkable . It is a corner of the
bajalica's yard, or her kitchen or a sleeping room,
depending on the season . (In cold months the kitchen
stove is the only source of heat .) Members of her
household may be nearby . They try to be un-
obtrusive . The equipment one bajalica uses is neatly
organized in a woven wool bag hanging from a peg
on the wall . Another usually calls out to a daughter-
in-law or grandchild to fetch needed items . The
structured ritual takes place in an unstructured envi-
ronment . It is the bajalica's conveyance of trust, and
her skillful use of talk and touch as she embarks on
her intervention with the unknown and her inter-
action with the patient, that enwrap the two in sacred
space and sustain a sense of sanctuary in the midst of
this informal setting .
Healing with talk
The very designation bajalica [from hajati (v) 'to
heal with words' ; also hajanje 'healing with words',
derive from Indo-European hha-'speaking out') [131 .
indicates the phenomenological power of talk in this
form of curative intervention . A skilled bajalica,
being part of an oral traditional culture where all
wisdom considered worthy of preservation and trans-
mission to descending generations is retrieved from
the storehouse of the mind and, in appropriate
contexts, passed on orally, has the ability to tap into
this inheritance in order to conjur up images and
metaphors and thus to create variants on charms to
dispel illnesses and other situations of disorder . Since
these are never recorded (except by the anthro-
pologist), the charms are fresh and 'correct' each time
and in whatever form they are uttered [14] .
For treating erysipelas some healers conjure up an
inventory of red metaphors and then proceed to
322 BARBARA KEREWSKY-HALPERN
banish them orally from this world, where 'the red
wind' has intruded, to 'out there' in the netherworld,
the domain of ill winds . She does not know about red
cells and white cells, but she understands well the
classic balance between good and evil . She knows the
sence of harmony when order is restored from disor-
der . By assigning dis-order and dis-ease a series of red
colored metaphors she then is able to cast them away
and to return to a non-red state, i .e . to order and
ease .
An inventive bajalica may also draw on her reserve
of oral skills to create visual and phonetic inventories
and later to reframe them in other parts of her charm .
To evoke the unknown world an elaborate catalog of
animals behaving inappropriately may be intoned :
. . . where the cat does not meow, where the dog
does not bark" and so forth . In Serbo-Croatian the
sequence of animal names and negation of corre-
sponding animal sounds creates a particularly hyp-
notic tonal charm. The listener, nodding off to this
concatenation of brays, bleats, peeps, clucks, crows,
and whatever else the conjurer adds in, abetted by the
lull of syntactic repetition, allows himself to slip into
that strange domain . With a pause and a reframing,
she abruptly brings him back to a level closer to
reality by calling up a new catalog, this time of
inappropriate references to the accessories of tradi-
tional religious ceremony . Here the catalog is
'known', but the juxtaposition with the unknown,
unnatural animal catalog is confusing . Such a'scram-
bling' technique serves to play the conscious mind
against the unconscious with the result that the
patient gives up conscious thought and drifts off to
wherever the bajalica's hypnotic talk may lead him .
Another ploy is to devise structured metaphors
from the strange world, often in simple four-line
narrative frames in which red animal mothers nourish
their red young on red food . Here redness (erysipelas)
is fitting for that red world . To give an idea of how
this kind of metaphor takes shape (ideally it should
be heard, not read), here is an example of a symbolic
`animal mother' frame :
Otud ide crvena kvoeka .
Vode deret crvenih pilica,
Padose na crceni bunjak,
Pokupi%e crveni cruici.
Out of there comes the red hen .
She leads nine red chicks .
She fell upon a red dung heap,
She gathered up red worms .
Using this structure, similar frames can be com-
posed for a cow, sow, ewe or other barnyard mother .
But the hajalica, the consumate non-red, healing
mother, nourishes with her words and thus restores
the red-afflicted patient from redness to lack of
redness, from illness to health . The sounds she uses
are augmented by employing the aorist verb form in
the second couplet of the 'animal mother' frame . This
special form, not used in ordinary speech . imparts a
ritual quality to the sounds . Beyond that the strong
sibilant suffixes (-ose/-ise) serve to soothe and shush .
The final banishment of erysipelas to 'out there'
often is accomplished by means of a closing meta-
phor in which the conjurer sends the disease away
through the co-mediation of a wolf whose forelegs
and hind legs bridge both worlds (literally through,
from anus to muzzle) [l5] . Site concludes by pro-
claiming the cure as a result of her own odgoror . In
Serbo-Croatian (as in English) this term has the dual
meaning of 'speaking out' (i .e . 'response') and 're-
sponsibility', a situation which affirms her power of
mediation with the unknown and her verbal skills in
effecting the magic of the charm [l6] .
In addition to the psychological affect of the
semantics of the charm, structure and sound impart
power as well . The conjurer's choice of sequential
syntactic arrangements and her phonological repeti-
tions make strong acoustical patterns . Shaped by
alliteration, assonance and inflection, they work to-
gether with semantics toward precipitating two im-
portant responses . The talk element in the healing
ritual enhances trust to a point where the patient
eases readily into an altered state . Further, within the
healing context induction of trance can activate
endorphins, analgesia-producing endogenous com-
pounds which, like morphine . may alleviate pain and
produce calm [17] . Talk thus functions as healing
metaphor, as exorcism and as tranquilizer . It pro-
vides the psychodynamic that moves the healing
process toward resolution .
Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian, raised the
issue of the validity of healing by means of talk in his
Historia Naturalis : "Have words and incantations
any effect? This is a most important question and one
never settled" [18] . Closer to our own time, analyzing
the power of therapeutic talk provides explanatory
models of process in oral tradition as well as of
process in therapy and healing . Aged baba Radcjka
interprets how she draws together the components of
her charms : "Well, what I recollect, I recollect . What
I don't recollect, I dream (up) at night' (19].
Touch as communicator
Touch is the communicative mode which keeps the
healing process intact . Here proxemics are prime .
Serbs interact with each other in extremely close
proximity, often touching while sitting or standing
together . Ordinary g reetings . to say nothing of ani-
mated conversations, are sealed with physical con-
tact . This is more than a prolonged handshake or
touch on the shoulder . It is a grasping of the other's
clothing or sometimes a rhythmic tapping on the
partner's arm or thigh, echoing the linguistic pulse .
In intervention for curative purposes the quality of
touch is more subtle . It is a connection . a bonding
between two participants . The point of contact may
not be directly at the locus of the problem . The type
of therapeutic touch used by old women in the
villages is all the more remarkable for its gentleness .
Usually the conjurer takes her time, observes, touches
with her eyes before she physically touches the
patient . Her peasant hands are work-worn, so she
warms and softens them with an emollient of heated
lard . When she eventually makes contact with those
rough-appearing hands, her touch is sure but delicate .
During the healing ritual, practitioner and patient
sit facing each other as closely as possible, either on
a low bed and stool, or kneeling opposite each other
on the floor or ground . As the conjurer utters her
charm some of her spittle may land on the patient-
 Trust, talk and touch in Balkan folk healing
Fig . 1 . Balkan bajalica and patient, 1984 . (Photo by B . Kerewsky-Halpern .)
This he views as another form of beneficial touch,
much like the power of fluids in Immoral medicine
(especially interesting in view of the fact that our
example is from contemporary Europe) .
Gifted conjurers touch with sound as well . As
suggested above . they caress with voice, using evoca-
tive words or utterances which alternately induce into
trance and then punctuate to altertness at moments
of exorcism . The patient appears to anticipate these
special effects and to learn to respond to them with
his body language in the course of the daily repeti-
tions . Some healers also touch with verbal pacing,
with eye contact and with breathing . Baba Gica
seems to scan her own breathing and adjust it to that
of her client . As the breaths deepen, the matched
respiration pattern is readily apparent to the ob-
server . When her attention is called to this sensitive
response she replies, "I don't know . It just happens .
We become as one" [201 . A patient of hers reacts
saying, "Afterwards, I feel calmed down and, you
know, livened up" .
The ritual closure to each segment of the healing
rite to banish 'the red wind' is purification by fire .
Just as the oral charm conjurs up a clever collocation
of red images, the sounds of which work their own
special spell, so . too, the non-verbal communicative
mode utilizes a strong visual red symbol to expedite
the banishment . After each of the repetitions of the
charm, a glowing red ember from the woodstove is
scooped up in a coal scuttle and waved before the
patient . Practitioner and patient bend toward and
away from each other as the bajalica manipulates the
live fire in minimal space between the two of them,
weaving an unspoken, elegant choregraphy . Here
again is convergence, a shared knowledge of appro-
priate communicative interaction . When the ember is
extinguished (or sometimes casually tossed back into
the stove) for the third time . this ends the ritual frame
323
and signals the formal close of treatment for the day .
That the purification by fire is perceived by both
participants as a closing act is noted by a change in
breathing patterns, mood and body arrangement, by
scraping of stools on the plank flooring or in the mud
courtyard and by a fairly abrupt return to the secular
world . Baba Draga invariably marks the passage by
muttering, "Well, it's done . Now to put on a bit of
balm" .
FOLK PERCEPTIONS, BODY RESPONSES
The healer then matter-of-factly applies some com-
mon sense nostrums . These are considered activities
outside the healing ritual . The bajalica examines the
wound and the larger infected area . She washes her
hands with rakija, a homemade highly distilled plum
brandy (which has a wide range of practical uses in
villages) and, dipping clean boiled rags into more
brandy, carefully disinfects the wound . She draws the
affected limb into a position where she can brace it
on the bed or against her own body and glides the
fingers of both her hands along skin surfaces sur-
rounding the infected area, always palpating in the
direction of the wound . What she appears to be doing
is effecting lymph drainage, a procedure which may
prevent further infection and ameliorate healing .
Touching in this particular manner is explained as
doing it kako treba, 'the right way' . The healer does
not know that she is facilitating the movement of
lymph and thus aiding healing ; what she does know
is that according to the folk aesthetic she is per-
forming the proper action .
By the second day of treatment a bajalica will have
prepared a balm to seal the wound . This she concocts
from readily available village ingredients . They in-
clude pharmacologically effective fresh or dried pul-
verized sage and camphor leaves . These are strained
324 BARBARA KEREWSKY-HALPERN
with simmered lard . The herbs and fat are worked
smooth with thumb and forefinger and bound with
beeswax, resin and incense into an aromatic paste.
This ointment is applied carefully, and the wound is
wrapped with strips of clean rags .
In the course of the three days necessary for the
oral charm to do its 'work' the patient's erysipelas
visibly subsides . Further infection is halted, and the
healing process takes over . At the same time, the
bajalica's reputation is maintained, the power of her
charm is reinforced and the value of folk healing over
a trip to the clinic in town is reaffirmed .
In urban Serbia reaction to this phenomenon is
mixed . A physician born in a village and on the staff
of a hospital in an urban center in Sumadija asks me,
"Why are you interested in these old-fashioned
things? It's all be= veze ('nonsense')!" Another doctor,
whose family have been city-dwellers for three
generations, muses, "Who knows, maybe there is
something to all this
EXPLANATORY APPROACHES
Participants in this kind of intervention maintain
that trust in the bajalica and faith in her words and
touch are the treatment . The disinfecting, application
of balm and protective bandaging (the biomedical
aspects) viewed as coincidental to the healing process
are nursing ministrations which are appropriate and
successful . However, the fundamental efficacy of the
healing ritual, and an explanation for its demonstra-
ble power, resides in culture elements embedded in a
people's collective knowledge . In the village setting
these work because they are known as truths . Beliefs
can help heal (21) .
Dismissing the process as 'placebo healing' or
'faith healing' falls short of full explanation . In rural
Serbian society particularly, another facet is the
perceived benefit of active social intervention at all
stages of the process . Interaction with a nurturing
bajalica is regarded as infinitely more satisfactory
than the impersonal biomedical option [22] .
There is a third explanatory approach . Increasingly
acknowledged by some neurologists, endo-
crinologists, immunologists, psychiatrists, anthro-
pologists and others are vital correlations between
brain and body responses . Research in the new
fields of neuroimmunomodulation and psychoneuro-
immunology are beginning to shed light on what
popular writing has (relatively) long been calling the
body/mind connection . The neurological linkages are
complicated two-way paths . Understanding these
interactive processes can clarify how the mind may
influence the immune s ystem . as in the example
selected . and, significantly, how the reverse procedure
also may be effected .
In our illustration the folk treatment described is
good psychotherapy . Further, the ritual as played
out in its diverse communicative modes incorporates
aspects of many behavior modification methologies
which usually conservative biomedical practitioners
are beginning to appreciate . These approaches in-
clude forms of biofeedback, imaging, metaphor,
stress reduction and relaxation techniques, hypnosis,
massage and therapeutic touch . All these procedures
in creative combinations are employed in the case
material as described, including ways in which the
patient is helped to 'let go' of anxiety and illness and
sometimes to start to take control over getting well .
Self-esteem is enhanced . Finally the whole person
feels better (" . . . calmed down and . . . livened up") .
For centuries Servian conjurers have been using
such symptomatic methodologies to banish 'the red
wind', techniques modern medicine is just beginning
to apply to treatment of cancers, infectious diseases
and irregularities of the autoimmune system . There
may be important lessons about treating people who
are ill that biomedicine can learn from the Balkan
bajalica .
REFERENCES
1 . In addition to material from Sumadija in Serbia, field
data is corroborated from other South Slav-speaking
areas of the Balkans. Research supported by grants
from the National Science Foundation, National En-
dowment for the Humanities and International Re-
search and Exchange Board are acknowledged with
appreciation .
2 . Of interest in this traditional oral culture is that he
identified himself as oofaoda, archaic designation for the
advance guard serving a medieval hero such as those
immortalized in Serbian epic poetry . His feat was
accomplished on flashing motorbike instead of charging
steed,
3 . Students and others regard the biomedical establish-
ment as 'traditional' in the area around the University
of Massachusetts at Amherst, where alternative health
care is abundant .
4 . Halpern J . M . and Kerewsky-Halpern B . A Serbian
Village in Historical Perspective ; Case Studies in Cul-
tural Anthropology . Holt . Rinehart & Winston, New
York, 1972 .
5 . See Lord A . The Singer of Tales . Atheneum, New York .
1968 . See also Kerewsky-Halpern B . Genealogy as an
oral genre in a Serbian village . In Oral Traditional
Literature, A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord (Edited
by Foley J . M .), pp . 301-321 . Slavica Publishers,
Columbus, OH, 1981 . On oral charms see Kerewsky-
Halpern B . and Foley J . M . The Power of the word :
healing charms as an oral genre . J. . Am . Folklore, 91,
901-924, 1978 and Kerewsky-Halpern B . Watch out for
snakes . ethnosemantic misinterpretations and interpre-
tation of a Serbian healing charm . .4nthrop . Ling . 309-
325. 1984 .
6 . Kerewsk y- Halpern B . On the complementarity of
women's ritual roles . Die geselleschaftliche Stellung der
Frau out dent Balkan, Frei Universitat . Berlin . In press .
7 . Kerewsky-Halpern B . Text and context in ritual lament .
Can : Am . Slay . Stud. 15, 52-60, 1981 .
8 . See also Douglas M . Purity and Danger. Routledge &
Kegan Paul . London . 1966 .
9 . In parts of rural England erysipelas is called 'the ruse'
or 'St Anthony's tire' . The Balkan folk taxonomy is
analyzed in Kerewsky-Halpern B . Speech as ritual and
process: aspects of the ethnoeraphy of communication
in Serbia . Ph .D . dissertation, Department of Anthro-
pology, University of Massachusetts . Amherst, 1979 .
10 . Occasional untreated cases of erysipelas are the subject
of rural horror stories . especially when infection occurs
on the face . Folk diagnoses are based solely on obser-
vation and experience: the practitioner 'knows' the
difference between 'the red wind' and an infected bug
bite . for example . See also Majno G . The Healing Hand:
Man and Wound in the Andent tForld. pp . 2-6 . Harvard
University Press. Cambridge . MA . 1975 .
11 . Checking an earlier folk term for gangrene to see if it
were crni retar . 'the black wind' (cf . Greek melm'mos),
 Trust, talk and touch in Balkan folk healing
reveals that 'the black wind' refers to blackheads ; this
retains the integrity of the Serbian taxonomy based on
superficial skin characteristics .
12 . This is another example of past wisdom carried over
into the present . It is said that after noon is the
propitious time to perform healing rituals, with the
illness letting up as the day wanes.
13 . Pokorny J . Indogermani .cchc .s Etnmologi.sehes Warier-
buch, pp. 105- 108 . A . Francke, Berne, 1953 . The
English term banns, as in posting the banns, derives
from the same root .
14 . On this process in epic poetry see Lord A . op . cit .,
p . 101 .
15 . For a drawing of this phenomenon by the Serbian artist
Milic od Macve, see journal issue cover . Kcrewsky-
Halpern B . and Foley .1 . M . op . cit . . reproduced from
Srpski mitnlo .fki refnik . p. 82 . Nolit, Belgrade, p . 82,
1970 .
16 . Formal linguistic analysis of semantic . syntactic and
phonological variants of this charm appears in -
Kerewsky-Halpern B . and Folcy J . M . op . cit . The
bajalica s embedded metaphors . scrambling techniques
and framings bear a marked resemblance to methods
used by medical hypnotherapist M . Erickson, whose
writings illustrate the psychodynamics of trance in-
duction through talk .
17 . Shamans and Endorphins, special issue Ed ties . Journal
of the Society for Psychological Anthropology (Edited
by Prince R .). Vol . 10, 4, 1982 . especially James H .
325
Possible involvement of endorphins in altered states,
pp . 394-408 .
18 . Pliny . 76 CE, quoted in Manjo G . op . cit . .. p . 345 . Pliny
notes further, "we certainly still have formulas to charm
hail, various diseases and burns, some actually tested by
experience, but I am very shy of quoting them, because
of the widely differing feelings they arouse . Wherefore
everyone must form his own opinion about them as he
.
please""
19. In Serbo-Croatian her utterance is, . Sta aunt . upanuim .
ja upamtim . $ro ne upamiim, ja sasnim noci" .
20. Her process and commentary parallel approaches in
movement awareness; see Feldenkrais M . 71re Elusive
Ohriou .s. Meta Publications, Cupertino . CA . 1981 .
21 . Hahn R . A . and Kleinman A . Belief as pathogen, belief
as medicine : 'voodoo death' and the 'placebo phenom-
enon' in anthropological perspective . Med. Anthrop . Q .
14, 1, 3 ff, 1983 . See also Brody H . Does disease have
a natural history? Med . Anthrop . Q . 14, 1, 4 ff and Stein
H . F. To cure, to control, to please : medicine after the
demise of 'the placebo' . Med. Anthrop . Q . 15. 1, 4 ff,
1983 .
22 . A sexist issue suggests itself here . There are men who are
gentle, caring and nurturing . Why cannot they be
healers? The explanation lies in attributes of purity and
power ascribed to ritually clean woman only and to the
underlying balance in realms of intervention in a society
defined as male-dominated .