An investigation into the phenomena and practices of spiritual ...

each other. Folk medicine is usually voluntary, has no appointment system where therecipient is waiting for hours in an outpatient department or the doctor‟s surgery.As noted in Chapter Two, alongside a respect for the expertise of doctors, and a hope of ahealing from God, every one practises their own practical self-healing. We tend to call ourown self-healing behaviour commonsense and that of others “foldicine”Folk medicine in the URC is limited to household treatment for colds and influenza orherbal medicines, whereas folk medicine in the Pentecostal church is more elaborate andextends to bush remedies that are imported from the West Indies and Africa or those soldin shops that specialize in the sale of African and Caribbean foods. There is clinicalliterature to support the effectiveness of some remedies. For example Canavan (2005)outlines an example of herbal or folklore medicine study where gunmead or poison ivy wasapplied directly to the skin of a group of 50 and 51year old women who were otherwisehealthy but complained of toxicodendron dermatitis, a skin condition. The skin conditionimproved and so did the symptoms of pain, stress, anxiety and sleep. This led the writer ofthe article to conclude that the relief of symptoms expressed by the patients makes thispotentially a valuable therapy and warrant further research as clinical trial. Stephanides(2009) outline the aetiology of toxicodendron dermatitis.For some of the respondents folk medicine as described by Ingliss (1980), Twigg (1979)and Hart (1969) is practised alongside traditional medicine and this is illustrated in theextract below. An extract below from my field notes of a conversation between groups ofwomen in COGIC illustrates this:145