FOLK MEDICINE FOR THE TREATMENT OF EYE DISEASES IN DALMATIA IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

Folk medicine is a traditional medical practice in the general population, especially in rural areas. Traditional medicine methods used herbal remedies as well as human and animal substances and minerals. The most commonly used drugs in the treatment of eye diseases were drugs of plant origin like chamomile, eyebright and greater celandine, then drugs of human and animal origin like breast milk, saliva, honey, animal bile, and copper sulfate from mineral origin. There is little information in the literature discussing the folk treatment of ocular diseases. The aim of this paper is to show how ocular diseases were treated in folk medicine in Dalmatia during the 19th century. Efforts were also made to explain the reasons for such empirical treatment that was passed from generation to generation. At the end of the 19th, and especially at the beginning of the 20th century, modern and scientific ophthalmology developed in Dalmatia, but also throughout Croatia, first in large cities. So gradually, folk medicine in the treatment of eye diseases became more and more forgotten.