MARIN VĂRZARU AND STOIAN BURUIANĂ CASES. MEDICAL CULTURE AND PEASANT CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 19TH CENTURY IN PRINCIPALITIES
MARIN VĂRZARU AND STOIAN BURUIANĂ CASES. MEDICAL CULTURE AND PEASANT CULTURE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 19TH CENTURY IN PRINCIPALITIES

Summary/Abstract: Marin Vărzaru and Stoian Buruiană Cases. Medical Culture and Peasant Culture in the Middle of the 19th Century in Principalities. The paper analyzes the relations between the peasant and scholarly cultures during the second half in the nineteenth century. The analysis is done by using two case studies: the inquiries of the sanitary authorities upon the activities of two empirical healers – Marin Vărzaru (who claimed to heal rabies) and Stoian Buruiană (healing the mental alienation). The two case studies prove the complex and sometimes ambiguous relations between authorities and the folk healers because if Marin Vărzaru who surely did not heal rabies came to be rewarded by authorities with a consistent sum of money, Stoian Buruiană whose most patients declared healed, would lose the right to ‘practice the profession’. By using these two case studies, and few others, we prove that the medicalization of Romanian society in the first decades after the middle of the nineteenth century was reduced only to the medical body.

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