Medicine and healing in the customary law ideas of the Don Cossacks in the second half of the 19th century

Abstract

In this article the author for the first time carries out a concrete and historical reconstruction of the customary and law ideas of the Don Cossacks about medicine and znakharstvo in stanitsa and farmsteads of the Don Army Region in the second half of the 19th century. Some means and ways of treatment of various diseases, which were widely used by healers and mendicants, as well as the main reasons, which contributed to stanitsa and farmstead residents' appeal to healers and mendicants of different “specializations” during the mentioned period of time, are considered in detail.