Belarusian ethnoveterinary medicine: Ritual practices and traditional remedies

Abstract

Issues of health, illness, medical and magical healing practices have been explored by scholars of a number of disciplines during the last centuries. Nevertheless, the main focus of their concern was on human health care while Belarusian ethnoveterinary medicine as an object of comprehensive study has attracted little attention of researchers until recently. This paper aims to fill in this gap to some extent, giving a compact overview of the main ethnographic and folklore sources on the topic, and concentrating on practices and methods that have been used by Belarusian peasants to treat livestock and preserve their health. Attention is paid to the cultural context of the functioning of traditional ethnoveterinary medicine in Belarus, including the role of the animal within practical spheres of culture, primarily husbandry systems, mythology and folk beliefs connected with issues of illness and health care; traditional practices of treatment and preventing diseases in livestock, which unite various verbal and actional elements as well as different kinds of apotropes, plant- and non-plant remedies are described.