21

Throughout the nineteenth century, the medical profession was engaged, through a series of pamphlets, in a heated controversy against traditional healers who were perceived as dangerous competitors in rural areas. Among the most recurring criticisms, physicians cited the latters’ ignorance of medical science, their lack of knowledge, the risk at which they put their patients, and their sneakiness and deception in extracting a “ransom” from their patients. These criticisms were most often sarcastic in tone and couched in caricatural portraits. While the medical community took aim at rural communities, the true motivation was resentment over the inertia or the lack of enthusiasm of the peasantry in embracing the progress of medical science. However, the peasants held their own in reviling doctors and scientific medicine. In these opposite points of view, the peasants displayed all the flair of their well-crafted proverbs, which portrayed medical science as inefficient, useless and too expensive; as for doctors, they were depicted as incompetent and even in cahoots with cemeteries. Meanwhile, witty and mocking dietary advice was used to avoid and defy the doctor. In other, less colorful ways this stand-off continues today with the new breed of “traditional healers.”