Лекуване на болестта "усад" в народната медицина
The treatment of the illness "Usad" in folk medicine

Summary/Abstract: There is a wide-spread Bulgarian folk medicine practice of treatment of a sick waist by a "twin woman" ("bliznakinya") - a woman who has twins children or a twin sibling berself. She steps over the sick man who is lying on his stomach at the threshhold of his house. The woman is holding a cowl staff, a poker, tongs or a crutch. Between the medicine woman and the sick man a short conversation takes place in which the illness is sent away and is substituted by the "twin-mother" ("bliznakova mayka"). The data show that this kind of treatment has been practiced throughout the whole Bulgarian ethnical territory in the past, and is also met in some regions nowadays. The article seeks to answer the question why twin woman is the person to treat sick waists. In this connection another very popular practice is remembered - the trampling on ("gazene") the sick man by a bear. At the spring feasts on St. George's Day, Palm Sunday and the week before Whitsuntide (Russalska nedelya) the women make belts of wormwood, withe, traveller's joy (Clematis vitalba) to prevent waist-aches during the coming hard field work. Folk beliefs connect this illness also with the cuckoo, the stork, the frog and the lightning. The bear and the wormwood are typical attributes of the Greek goddess Arthemis and he Thracian forbearer Bendida, both closely related to the twins-myth. The conclusion is that it is possible to seek in this medical practice remnants of antique or even more archaic mythological plot, centered round the cult to the female goddess from the twins myth.

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