ABSTRACT
MEDICINE, FOLK Folk medicine refers to systems of knowledge and practice for health maintenance and the treatment of illness and injury that, among other characteristic features, depend on oral transmission. Folk medical knowledge and practice are grounded in beliefs about wellness in groups that may share features of cultural identity such as ethnicity, religious tradition, region, or occupation. Within these groups, authoritative status may be ascribed to individual practitioners. Folk medical arenas are home and community based, wherein practitioners and patients usually share
cultural and social affinities. Folk medical knowledge tends to be maintained, accessed, and practiced outside, but never in isolation from, the institutions of biomedicine-the medical school and library, the hospital, or other clinical setting. As a result, folk medicine both complements and competes with clinical biomedicine.
