Las medicinas tradicionales en el noroeste argentino.

Reflexiones sobre tradiciones académicas, saberes populares, terapias rituales y fragmentos de creencias indígenas.

Abstract

In the present article, the authors describe traditional medicines in the Northwest of Argentina (NOA), particularly the quack medicine, and the traditional homemade medicine. From original materials, obtained through open and extensive interviews made to key informants and natural groups, they will try to show that the practices of lay people and healers synthesize old biomedical theories –mostly related to the humoral ideas– with the European popular medicine from century XVI to the XX, and with ritual practices, many of them catholic or associated in terms of that system of beliefs.