-
3. Treating the “Other Animals”: Russian Ethnoveterinary Practices in the Context of Folk Medicine
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
42 Issues of human health, illness, and medical practices have always been of great importance to society, and health problems, especially those caused by epidemic diseases, have often influenced or even caused historical, cultural , and social change. Thus, scholars from a number of disciplines have explored the sociocultural importance of medicine and issues of human health.1 Similarly, Russian scholars have for a long time focused on the practice of folk medicine in Russia.2 Yet, while significant scholarly attention is devoted to humans healing humans, historians, ethnographers, and folklorists have paid little attention to Russian folk veterinary practice and its place in Russian folklore. Even the species of animals that have played the most profound part in the livelihood of Russian peasants have been just “other animals” when it comes to matters of health. Peasants especially relied on husbandry in regions where crop-based agriculture did not fare well. In these regions (for example, the Russian north), an epidemic or serious illness among the livestock meant ruin for peasant households.3 Despite this tight interdependence between the health of livestock and human welfare, or even survival, Russian folk culture paid more attention to human illness than to illness among animals. Russian folk veterinary medicine represents only a small part of Russian folk medicine ; however, this domain of folk knowledge can provide some particular insights into the culture of Russian peasants. 3H treAtingthe“OtherAnimAls” Russian Ethnoveterinary Practices in the Context of Folk Medicine mikhail alekseevsky costlow nelson text4.indd 42 6/23/10 8:40 AM treAting the “Other AnimAls”————43 An analysis based on ethnographic study that compares and contrasts the methods of healing used in treating animals and humans makes it evident that folk concepts of animal diseases and treatment methods are based on concepts about human diseases. However, Russian folk veterinary is much less developed than folk medicine. The list of animal diseases that peasants are able to identify is much shorter than that of human ailments. A pragmatic approach to matters of animal health is typical for Russian peasants: rural healers concentrate their attention on diseases that influence cows’ milk yields and horses’ work. Scholarly research on folk veterinary knowledge in Russia has taken a fundamentally different approach from that taken elsewhere. In the West, academic interest in people’s traditional health care for animals first emerged in the mid-1970s. In 1986, Constance McCorkle was the first one to use the term ethnoveterinary.4 Three years later, McCorkle and Evelyn Mathias-Mundy published an annotated bibliography containing 261 references , with greatest emphasis on the ethnoveterinary medicine of the African continent, Latin America, and, to a lesser degree, Asia. In 1997, the International Conference on Ethnoveterinary Medicine concerning alternatives for livestock development took place in India. By that time, ethnoveterinary medicine had already become an established academic discipline. In 2001, a voluminous annotated bibliography of community animal health care was published; it consisted of 1,240 publications that dealt with sociocultural, politicoeconomic, environmental, and biomedical aspects of ethnoveterinary medicine all over the world.5 However, even this exhaustive publication cites no works that pertain to Russian ethnoveterinary practices, and Western ethnoveterinary specialists know almost nothing about Russian practices.6 Research in the field of ethnoveterinary medicine is generally carried out by professional veterinarians who consider it an alternative to mainstream veterinary medicine. These researchers often express their interest in ethnoveterinary practices in developing countries, where the possibilities for using mainstream veterinary methods are limited. Evelyn Mathias notes that, in many developing countries, livestock owners have no access to modern veterinary services, nor can they buy expensive medications for their animals. For these people ethnoveterinary practice is the only way to combat animals’ diseases. Mathias complains that “conventionally trained veterinarians often tend to think of ethnoveterinarians as practitioners of ‘witchcraft’ or ‘mumbo-jumbo,’ while many practices are effective.”7 Ethnoveterinary specialists try to identify “effective ethnoveterinary practices” and then prove their efficacy scientifically. Modern Western scholars show the greatest interest in herbal medicines costlow nelson text4.indd 43 6/23/10 8:40 AM [34.200.219.10] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:44 GMT) 44————mikhAil Alekseevsky used to treat animals.8 However, ethnoveterinary knowledge consists not only of methods and practices pertaining to the health care of animals, but also folk beliefs connected with animals’ diseases. Studying treatment practices alone may give a distorted idea of folk knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, ethnoveterinary specialists pay little attention to folk beliefs and magical rituals, which...