"According to the above data both magic practices and rational knowledge (e.g. usage of medicinal herbs) played important roles in Hungarian ethnoobstetrics – like in ethnomedicine generally. Recovery was also promoted by prayers, incantation and fasting. All these methods were applied together and they considered them equally effective."
"There have been at least 600 species of wild and cultivated plants that were used in Hungarian ethnomedicine during the last 150 years… The gathered and processed parts involved almost everything from mushroom spores to pinecone, or from the roots to the flower petals, depending on the usage of higher or lower plant species (moss, lichen, mushrooms)."
"In making herbal medicines or gaining herbal extracts they used mostly water or alcoholic drinks: beer, fruit wines (made of grapes, raspberry, redcurrants, rosehips, mulberry) and brandy (distilled from plums) as solvent. They also used herbal oils and animal fats (lard, goose or duck fat, milk) in order to gain active agents. These fats promoted the smooth application of the powdered or pulped herbs on the skin surface."
In this second part on traditional medicine in Hungary, our honorary editorial team member Dr Peter Babulka, founder member of the European Society of Ethnopharmacology, shares his research on traditional knowledge of the Hungarian peoples covering subjects such as child-birth at home, cures for rheuma, and the collection and processing of herbs for the preparation of herbal medicine in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In our HERBS-TRADITIONS section of our inspiring new SPRING issue of AROMATIKA Magazine 9.1. , you will find this wonderful research article titled Centuries of Traditional Medicine in Hungary Part II.
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