Paper short abstract:

Reversing modernisation's predicament of folk practices' erasure by biomedicine, hydrotherapy exemplifies a way folk beliefs influence conventional health care. Data will refer to current research on Portuguese mineral water springs and sulphurous spas.

Paper long abstract:

Back in the 1970s and afterwards, social scientists sustained that the expansion of biomedicine and its cultural hegemony would erase folk medicines and abolish vernacular healing practices. Further research on the interaction between different medical systems has shown otherwise: practices and beliefs from supposedly contradictory systems coexist and form original compounds, shared by large or restricted groups. The notion of a progressive surveillance, medicalization and normatization of the bodies and bodily practices gave place to a more complex understanding of the interactions between biomedicine and other healing systems. In this paper I will contribute to that discussion by analysing how hydrotherapy in general, and the use of sulphurous waters in particular, can be shown as a case where folk practices and beliefs influence conventional physicians and health care providers. Using data from an extensive inquiry into Portuguese mineral water sources and spas and from participant immersion in sulphurous atmospheres, I will analyse the role of the ritual use of sacred waters in the tensions and transformations of the water spas industrial-medical complex.