Folk Medicine in Southern Appalachia

Cavender melds folklore, medical anthropology, and Appalachian history and draws extensively on oral histories and archival sources from the 19th century to the present. He provides a complete tour of ailments and folk treatments organized by body systems, as well as information on medicinal plants, patent medicines, and magico-religious beliefs and practices. He investigates folk healers and their methods, profiling three living practitioners: an herbalist and a Native American healer. The book also includes an appendix of botanicals and a glossary of folk medical terms.