Maria Lidzhigoryaeva, About Folk Medicine

Abstract

In this short interview Maria talks briefly about how people cured their children in Siberia. Maria: In Siberia when children fell ill or had fever, how did we cure them? As far as I remember we gave them shirmg, i.e. boiled water with oats. Saglara: What is shirmg? M: You take 3 cups of water and boil it. We cured so. God looked after us - every nomadic settlement had a healer. Healers cured people secretly. Sometimes parents cured their children themselves. We also cut coins from the edge and massaged the joints with butter. S: During childbirth - there were no doctors. Were there? M: We looked for midwives who were old women. The fact that there were no doctors was not obvious.