"The soul that goes to the doctors does not live:" disease and illness among nineteenth-century Russian peasants.

Abstract

The article deals with the representation of illness among Russian Orthodox peasants from the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century. Materials from ethnographic expeditions, folklore, nineteenth-century texts on treatments, memoirs, and publications in the local press are used as sources. Analysis of the sources allowed us to reach the following conclusions: the conception of illness among Russian peasants was constructed by various actors; rural doctors were the least influential among these actors; and illnesses were represented as a consequence of mixing the world of the living and the world of the dead or the action of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic entities, with treatment implying a return to the natural ("correct") order of things.