Mother and child's health care in the Karelian village in the late 19 -early 20 centuries: family traditions and professional medicine

The article considers, on the one hand, typical for Karelian folk culture ways to take care of mothers and children’s health by revealing both rational and irrational folk healing practices; on the other hand, the article describes a process of professional medicine adoption by the countryside. The authors discuss problems of co-existing official medicine and folk healing traditions in the circumstances of spreading professional health care for peasants organized by the local self-governments (zemstvo).