Paper Short Abstract:

With a rapid development of digital archives of various memory institutions in Lithuania, researchers are exposed to large amounts of various data that could be used for interdisciplinary studies. This presentation examines folk medicine's interplay with 1890s–1940s printed medical advice in Lithuania, highlighting cultural knowledge transmission, standardization, and coexistence of folk and official health paradigms.

Paper Abstract:

For the past 20 years, the Lithuanian Folklore Archives (Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore) is creating the Digital Archive. With similar processes happening in other memory institutions, the researchers are offered new opportunities to examine the relationship between folklore collections and other media that existed during the corresponding time period when the personal or collective folklore fieldwork was being carried out. Digital-humanities methods, e.g. large-scale comparative analyses of textual and oral traditions, as well as machine learning algorithms could be employed as means to identify thematic overlaps in the near future. Analysis of relationship between recorded tradition and printed sources could reveal patterns of adaptation as well as resistance, highlighting the persistence of folk practices alongside the society that started pursuing deeper knowledge of its surroundings.

In this presentation I will explore the interplay between folk medicine and printed medical advice in 1890s to 1940s Lithuania, emphasizing the value of interdisciplinary approaches to understanding this relationship. Folk healing practices, often transmitted orally within communities, were frequently at odds with, yet influenced by, the rising industry of printed health manuals, instructions on disease prevention, and various periodicals. These printed texts sought to commodify health practices while often reflecting (and reshaping) local knowledge systems. My aim is to address questions, such as the cultural transmission of medical knowledge, the attempts of standardization of health practices, and the ways of coexistence of folk and official medical paradigms, hoping to provide useful insights for the further research of folk medicine and medical history.